The Story

When I started my counseling job, I expected I would have lots of interesting stories to share. I’m finding that, despite the wholly obvious fact that every single client’s situation is unique, the individual tales are all sadly similar. Every day, there is something that stays with me, a moment or two that I take home with me – the woman in the adjoining room today, for example, whose sobbing I could hear, but whose situation I never learned – but the stories themselves all merge into one long, melancholy, and desperate narrative.

I’m trying to think of one story that stands out more than the rest … a story I can tell you, so that you will understand why every day of this work is an epiphany for me. It’s maddening, not being able to illustrate why. Yes, the stories merge – and generalizations arise – but behind them are people. And I want you to understand that. I want you to read this and see where generalizations, individuals, preconceptions, and surprises all meet up.

Perhaps I’ll give you some of the moments I bring with me, and let the stories write themselves.

Woman in the next room, alternately sobbing and shouting. She is on the phone, with whom I have no idea.

I’m meeting with a client named Greg – he has lost part of his leg to an infection and tries to stay off his feet as much as possible. Another client brings him some coffee so he can relax where he is.

Family sits in the dingy waiting room. Younger child is about 2-1/2 and adorable: purple overalls with matching purple pony tail tie. Older brother of 7 or 8 keeps an eye and hand on her empty stroller, while she hops up and down next to Dad.

Woman in 60’s, on Social Security, asks for help feeding 2 children left temporarily in her care by their mother, a friend of hers who is in county jail for welfare fraud. They are not her children, she does not have birth certificates for them, the food closets can’t help her. She has no food left and no money until her Social Security arrives at the end of the week. Their father has disappeared and is likely homeless. I don’t even know if we were able to assist her. I am tempted to call CFS, but I do not.

Man meets with Housing Counselor and tells of being delusional and losing custody of his child – he has since been diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome, he says, and is a musician. He charms the counselor and keeps her attention for forty minutes while three other clients wait for her. He talks about tics and neuron misfires – and working as a Montessori teacher. I overhear this eccentric man spinning yarns, and realize the delusions are still an active part of his daily world.

I don’t know if I’m getting through here. I don’t know if I can share bits and pieces of reality with you – show you snippets and quarters through a keyhole – and have make any kind of sense.

On Grace and Preconception

The other day, I talked about Gratitude (relating to my work as a counselor at a social service agency). I wanted to follow up on that. Most of the comments were thoughtful. One person in particular said "Don’t buy into that self-pitying garbage." I asked "What self-pitying garbage?" but he hasn’t replied. I hope he’ll return and elaborate – I’m not entirely sure what he meant by that.

I do want to say, though, that if he was commenting about the ’stories’ people tell me – I offered those up as examples of embarrassed clients trying to make their need for help ‘acceptable’. As though they think I might deny them legitimate assistance if I don’t like the story or find them insufficiently ‘blameless’. They expect to be judged and found lacking.

"I had some bad luck." There’s not a hint of self-pity in that.

Also mentioned was how it wasn’t the Grace of God that ‘kept him from sleeping under a bridge’ – it was him getting up & going to work every day. [rough paraphrase, sorry] I think that response is a bit too easy, as it dismisses my point by bypassing it, but I’ll respond ever so briefly.

For some folks, having a job to go to could be an example of God’s Grace. Having options, having choices – those can be illustrations of that Grace. So, yes, you go to work and earn your pay – you physically pay that rent. But it might just be that the combination of factors (the fact that you were born with the physical ability to do that job, the mental capacity to care for yourself & live independently, and the sanity to maintain your lifestyle) & choices (selecting a particular degree program, opting to apply for that job, and so on, through thousands upon thousands of individual choices leading to this moment) show the work of a higher power. Then again, it could be luck or random or fate or whatever.

"There but for the Grace of God" … is how I express that I am humble enough to realize that I may not be solely responsible for every good thing that’s happened in my life, that I have been given gifts & options which had less to do with my willing them into existence than with them being offered freely and with love.

Before I really start to ramble …

I’m not advocating any one particular spiritual belief. Just putting it out there that maybe, just maybe, it’s not all ‘YOU’ making things happen. Options, choices, decisions, mistakes, corrections, opportunities – all put us where we are right now. And maybe those options were random or entirely your doing, but maybe, just maybe, you were given a selection from which to choose. And here you are. Comfortable, perhaps – housed, clothed, fed, at least. Good on ya. And if you’d chosen one or two different options, or if you were mentally ill, untreated, and your family would not or could not care for you – you might be one of my clients right now.

I’m just sayin’.

Edit: You know, I think I’m being too tentative here. None of us gets anywhere alone. That’s an unequivocal fact, as well as a spiritual belief. Every single one of us was given a boost by someone – call it ‘the Grace of God’ or ‘the generosity and love of my family & friends’. If you have a decent life now, you probably owe someone a debt of thanks – because you didn’t do it all by yourself. Okay, maybe the guy on the desert island, left entirely to his own devices … but even he learned from someone how to keep going despite the 200 failed firebuilding attempts

Gratitude

A couple of weeks ago, one of the other counselors asked me, “What are you smiling about?” I told her “Hey, I’m having a great time.” The truth is a bit more complicated than that, and I surely didn’t want to get into a long conversation about it (we were both in the middle of dealing with clients).

I was having a great time, to be sure – it’s a good feeling to give a client something he can use (bus tickets, ID vouchers, referrals to agencies that can provide rehab services). But the smile goes on the minute I walk in the door, long before the clients arrive. I smile the morning away because I’m glad I don’t need the services that I’m providing to others. It’s automatic – I’m grateful to be the provider and not the recipient.

I read the intake forms, and I see “Monthly Family Income” listed at $600, $540, $330, $250 (dear god, $250?), $0 (zero? jesus). Yes, most clients with any income at all are on some form of public assistance – if that very idea is distasteful to you, don’t work with poor people. That’s my advice.

Many clients, when asked, “Where do you need to go? Why do you need a bus ticket?” launch into the tale of why they’re poor.

“I had some bad luck. My boyfriend left us & I couldn’t pay the rent.”

“I’m an alcoholic. I went into rehab, but then I fell off the wagon. I’m trying to stay sober. I need to get over to the VA & try to get my check.”

“I had some trouble with the law; I just got out & I’m just trying to get over to my Probation Officer. Then I gotta get my belongings from lockup & find a job.”

“I was mentally ill for a while. I lost my mother & didn’t want to live anymore – I burned all of my documents & lost my job and apartment. I just want to get another ID card, so I can go to the food locker.”

(That last one I heard yesterday, for those of you keeping score at home.)

Poor clients of social service agencies are used to being questioned, distrusted, and judged. So they want to explain why it is that they’re in such a difficult, embarrassing, shameful position. What I’d like to say is: I don’t care how you got here, unless that holds the key to getting out. You don’t have to explain your life to me; you don’t need to find a ‘reasonable’ excuse. If you fucked up or didn’t, it’s no matter to me. What do you need right now, so I can help you?

And if I had fucked up sufficiently, I’d be there too. I’m glad – so glad – I’m not. What was it my Grandmother used to say? “There but for the Grace of God …” Well, that’s what I say to myself when I walk through the door. And that’s why I smile like an idiot. My God, I’m so grateful not to be a client; not to have my every little need and request judged, questioned, explained. Or so it must seem, from that side of the desk.

So I smile, smile, smile. It’s genuine and it’s real. I’m happy to be there. Happy to be of service. Happy to provide & not receive. Happy to have a home to go to after my counseling gig is finished. Happy to have family & friends who would never ever hang up on me if I needed a bus ticket home, or leave me to sleep on the steps of a church if I lost everything (including my mind).

I’ve said it before. I say it often. Be grateful for what you’ve got. There but for the Grace of God, go all of us.

And if you’ve been there … you’ve got all my respect for getting yourself where you are now.

Political Diatribe!

Blah blah blah partisan hoo-has! Blah blahdy blah the Administration blah blah. Bush & Cheney blah-blah-blah BLAH. And if you disagree you prove yourself to be an unpatriotic reactionary with no understanding of recent history, nor a grasp on the basic tenets of logical discourse.

Blah blah pinkos. Blah bla-bla blah Stalin! Blah blah blahdy blah Fascists!

Further, blah blah bla-bla-bla blah. Blah blah Bill Simon. Blah blah blah Gray Davis. Blah blah Jeb Bush. Blah blah blah Janet Reno blah Bill McBride!

Blah on Republicrat blah! Blah blah blah two party system!

Blah blah blah Saddam blah Weapons of Mass Destruction! Blah blah Hitler blah gassed his own people! Blah blah Al Qaeda. Blah blah blah Regime Change blah Weapons Inspections! Blah blah blah Destabilize the Region & blah blah blah Blood for Oil.

Blah blah Homosexuality blah Abortion blah Jihad blah Secular Humanists blah Fundamentalists blah Islamikazes blah Israelis blah Palestinians blah Neocons blah The New York Times!!!

Fear of Failure

Lots of folks have linked to this post by Dawn Olsen. In a nutshell: along with parenting goes no small dose of terror.

So, about terror & children.

I do not have children. I am married. My husband presumes that ’some day’ we’ll have kids. I am not so certain. I like children. No – I love children. But I fear I would do any child a disservice by attempting to raise him. I fear I am too selfish, self-absorbed, moody, impatient, fill in the blank to do it right. Bearing children is not mandatory, thank the deity of your choice, so it comes down to a matter of choice. I have the luxury of pondering it all. I’m so fortunate. And what I ponder most is … regret.

Will I regret my choice, either way? If I have a child & turn out to be a nightmare mother, I would regret that. Deeply. Too deeply to stand. I am impatient. I can be short tempered. I have a sharp tongue. I am too critical. And I still sting a bit from my own mother’s impatient, short tempered, sharp tongued criticism … Some of the things she said when I was 8, 10, 15 years old still hurt. Can I risk having that effect on another person? You know how it goes – it’s always the parents. I don’t think I could live with myself if I knew my child carried around deep wounds I caused by speaking in anger or thoughtlessness.

But would I regret not having children? The efforts I’ve made over the last few years to develop a more compassionate view of humanity, the strides I’ve made in overcoming self-doubt & despair – can I extend that to parenting? Is it possible I can rise to the occasion? Would I be a better parent than I give myself credit for? And, if so, would it then be a mistake not to go forward – doesn’t the world need more happy, well adjusted children?

But it’s permanent. It’s not as though you can return them if it turns out you made a mistake – or if the child isn’t quite what you expected. Once you decide, you have to stick with it. Once you have them, you have them for life.

I don’t know one parent who wouldn’t say that having a child was the single most amazing, life-changing experience ever. They’ll all say they love their children and feel blessed. All of which I don’t doubt for a moment.

But I wonder if they weigh the mistakes they’ve made against the positives & find they’re somehow lacking. I can’t imagine that a loving parent would say they ‘regret’ having children, but I wonder if there isn’t a small voice inside asking “Are you sure you made the right decision?”

If you’re a parent, are you allowed to wonder if you’re the last person in the world who should be trying to raise children? If you’re a parent, are you allowed to doubt yourself? How do you get past that terror? How do you get through each day without thinking you’re fucking it all up?

And what do you do when you do fuck it all up?

You see? It’s endless.

Blue

I tear up so easily these days. I sometimes don’t know if that means I’ve become more sentimental or easily manipulated in my old age … or simply more honest & authentic. I hope the latter.

OK. Full disclosure. In my younger days, you might have described me as ’seriously depressed’. You might also have described me as DEEPLY disturbed. Self-destructive, self-loathing, and sometimes suicidal. This is not uncommon or rare – many of you have been through the same. Here’s the thing – ‘depression’ is not just about feeling sad, it’s about feeling so bad, awful, hateful, unwanted, unloveable, etc., that you shut down and feel little or nothing at all, if you can help it.

It becomes a question of control. “Can I control my environment sufficiently to prevent feeling anything?” Then, “Can I control my own feelings sufficiently to prevent my becoming aware of them?” To, “Can I control anything at all sufficiently to simply prove to myself that I have some tiny bit of control over this wildly careening chaos that passes for life?” Which leads to variants on “Can I control what I take in/let out/put on/do to my body?” Sometimes leading to “Can I at least control how I die?” Yes, that’s flippant. But what else can I do? It’s all very complex – varying combinations of neuroses, psychoses, imbalance, neuron misfires, and parenting failures. But it’s also very simple – sometimes you feel like shit for so long, all you can think of is how to stop it unequivocally.

So, it’s complex – but simple, too. And a common response is: Don’t feel, ’cause at least that way you won’t feel BAD.

So now, when I feel something deeply enough to get a lump in my throat, I have to appreciate that I’m capable of feeling it at all.

So, I guess I should thank my lucky stars that I get choked up when I read something like this. Right? But I feel like shit, anyway.

This is no anniversary

So I think it’s okay for me to tell my own little story, without risking uncomfortable associations with ‘memorialization’ or manipulative sentimentality. When it comes to high-intensity emotional events, I am the Anti-Sentimentalist – the higher the emotional intensity, the more important it is to speak of an event plainly and honestly.

On September 11th, I went to work, just like any other day – except …

I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, getting ready to leave for the office, when I turned on the radio to listen for the traffic report. At the time, I listened to the Oldies station in the morning – no news, no talk radio, just cheesy oldies. The normally airheaded DJs were strangely serious – and were babbling about some ‘attack’. It was a bit after 7am Pacific (10am EST) – so the news was all over the air.

I was baffled. They mentioned the World Trade Center being attacked & a plane hitting the Pentagon. But I got ready for work anyway, and as I left, I kissed my husband goodbye and told him he needed to get up and watch the news because ’someone attacked the World Trade Center, but I don’t really understand what’s happening’. He thought I was kidding (poor guy was half-asleep, so you can’t blame him), but he got up soon after I walked out. I was baffled. I was dazed.

I was stuck in slow traffic on the freeway in to work. I listened to a news station on the way in, and soon came to understand the gravity of the morning’s events. What I remember was that, when I looked around at the other drivers on the road, they all seemed to be dazed, too. The road was oddly silent – filled with cars, but almost seeming trapped in a muffling fog (it was a hazy morning). I sensed that everyone was straining to hear something … something behind the news, maybe. I don’t know. But I knew they all, every person on that road, all of them were in the same state – they all were in shock, dazed, confused.

When I got in the office, my coworkers were huddled around a television in the conference room. I went to my desk, turned on my computer, and switched on the news radio station I’d been listening to in the car. I started to wonder about myself – why I’d come in, why not stay home? No work would get done that day, what was the point? What the fuck did I come in here for?

I went to watch the pictures – I hadn’t seen any of the video yet. I couldn’t stay and look – I went back to my desk and started IM’ing friends, to see how they were doing. I called my husband to let him know I had arrived safely. Then I went back to see the video again – that’s when the first tower collapsed. I watched it. “My God. How many people? How many people were in there? Oh Dear God.” I wanted to throw up. I left the room and stayed away the rest of the day.

Shock. Shock hit and stayed the rest of the day. I sat at my desk, got nothing done, and couldn’t leave until the end of the workday. I wanted to go home, but NO ONE in my office left, so I had to stick it out. If they can, I guess I must. I guess I should.

As the day dragged on, my officemates started talking about work-related crap – even cracking jokes; they seemed to take no notice of collapse, destruction, fear, and talk of terrorism – and I just stared at them. ‘Business as usual’ returned to my office within hours. I could not understand how they just ‘got over it’. I felt ashamed to see them laughing and joking, like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. It made me angry for reasons I couldn’t articulate at the time. Nearly a year later, I still don’t quite understand it. But now I chalk it up (at least in part) to private grieving. Not everyone responds to a shock by focusing on it to the exclusion of going about ‘business as usual’. I suppose that if we don’t go on as if nothing ever happened, the terrorists win, right?

Right?

But the truth can now be told: ‘business as usual’ made no real difference for the business in question – the company’s stock now hovers around pennystock level and they’ve laid off over 70,000 people in two years, including me. A day of mourning will not affect a dying tech company’s money hemorrhage.

I should have stayed home. I should have called my boss and said “I just heard the news. I’m in shock. I’m upset. I’m not coming in. I’ll see you tomorrow. Please take care of yourself today.”

Because people are more important than business as usual.

Bias to the Mainstream

Yesterday’s post on Bias and Michael Newdow drew a lot of responses, thanks to a link from Instapundit.

Nearly all the comments were interesting to read & I really appreciate the dialogue, but only a few of them responded directly to the topic of bias to the status quo.

So let me just get this out of the way: the question of Dr. Newdow’s legal standing comes down to this – he can sue on his child’s behalf. Let’s not get distracted by issues of custody & how the media is USUALLY (in the opinion of the Right) liberally biased. Let’s also not get buried in the arguments For and Against the Pledge ruling, nor why it is that I can be dismissed as obviously a clueless shill for the Left since I respect both doctors and lawyers. Whew. We can move on, yes?

No one is unbiased. No one has a ‘neutral perspective’.

However, lots of people think they’re unbiased and viewing events from a neutral perspective.

Which, of course, means they are unaware of their own biases and dismiss any disagreement as ‘biased’. Duh. Of course it’s bias – it’s just not YOUR bias.

(Geez, think I could use the word ‘bias’ a few more times?)

What I find interesting about discussion of ‘bias in the media’ is that presumption that ‘the media is liberal’. Nope. Not in my experience. The mainstream media is just that: mainstream. Television, most especially. The media do not drive the issues, the media report them. The media are reactive (investigative journalism, notwithstanding).

Most media outlets don’t take chances for fear of losing viewers or readers – they report for the Majority. And THAT is what colors reporting. The majority is centrist, and swaying slightly to the right on select topics (crime, for example).

Majority America doesn’t like extremism. If the Majority was inclined to like extremism, Nazis and Communists would get elected to office. We’re about staying close to the Center, staying right in the middle of the road whenever possible.

And let’s remember, I’m talking about two local Sacramento stories. They might have been reportedly differently elsewhere, but here, the Majority leans to the conservative, particularly where children, religion, or flag-waving are concerned.

In this case, Michael Newdow is identified in such a way as to make him appear slightly ‘extreme’, slightly outside the mainstream. His work would bring him back in, but any mention is omitted. That is significant – maybe folks who use ‘lawyer’ as an epithet hate doctors, too, but around here doctors still have some standing. As does higher education & the ability to argue a case successfully before a federal court.

The mother has status, simply by virtue of being the mother – Newdow, on the other hand, looks like a deadbeat dad, a picture reiterated in some of the comments on yesterday’s post : his right to sue on his child’s behalf is questioned because he’s presumed a ’stranger’ to her. Why is he presumed a stranger to her? Because – TaDa! – he’s not married to her mother. And I called that irrelevent to the legal issues – which it is – but it’s very relevent to hinting at his ‘outsider’ status. He’s a godless deadbeat now, rather than a father and physician. Don’t tell me there isn’t a significant difference between those two descriptions.

If the popular mindset was not in such opposition to his agenda, his role as a doctor would play a greater role in how he is described. As it is, he’s messing with a newly repopularized public assertion of patriotism, and so he is cast as an outsider. Popular = Good. Unpopular = Bad.

And that, as I said before, is Bias to the Status Quo.

Whew. I’m done.

Are you sure that it’s LIBERAL media bias?

Two items related to Michael Newdow …

First, this article:

The Sacramento Bee — Mother of girl in pledge lawsuit wants “under God” back in

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The mother of the schoolgirl named in the Pledge of Allegiance case has filed a motion to keep the words “under God” in the pledge.

Sandra Banning of Elk Grove, filed a motion Monday to intervene in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals June 26 ruling that the words “under God” make the pledge unconstitutional. If the court will not allow that, she asks that references to her daughter be taken off the lawsuit.

Banning said she must intervene on her daughter’s behalf because neither Banning nor her daughter think there is anything wrong with reciting the words “under God” in the pledge.

Banning said she and her daughter are Christians. The 8-year-old girl believes in God, and wants to be able to say that part of the pledge, according to the filings.

Fair enough, although I frankly see Ms. Banning’s efforts as a bid for (a) favorable media coverage in what should be a private discussion with Newdow over what sort of religious exposure their child should receive in school – but there may be some desire to discredit him publicly, possibly to cement her standing in future custody hearings, and (b) reflected glory as ‘defender of all that is good and right and decent and Christian and patriotic about America’ – with Newdow, of course, cast as the Anti-Christ. Whatever.

After trading a few barbed quotes between Banning and Newdow, Newdow reiterating that the point of the case was that a child should be able to attend public schools without religious indoctrination, the reporter describing Newdow solely as ‘a Sacramento atheist’, and pointing out that Banning has had full custody of the child since February – the piece closes with this COMPLETELY IRRELEVENT infobite:

Banning and Newdow have never been married.

Whoosh! That’s the sound of the point passing us by.