There’s a storm a’brewin’.
This week has seen most of my coworkers circling around a foregone conclusion. They weren’t coming to work. If (x) number of inches of snow hits, if the roads are too bad, or if they feel like going in the hole for PTO that will have to be paid back, they aren’t coming. Some handed out homework to inmates in advance, almost positive if they weren’t going to be here today, they wouldn’t be here Friday either. Some cited their distance to work and general inability to drive very slowly for what would be well over an hour. Some were content to eat up their time off. Most telling to me, they all wanted to know what *you* were doing, including my direct boss.
We look for license. We want to be part of the group. This is nothing new, special, or confusing. I refrained from placing myself into an expectation of not making it in. I didn’t want the license or forgone conclusion of it all. I’ve lived in Indiana my whole life. I’ve driven in every kind of snowy conditions available. I know the difference between iced-over and sliding uncontrollably, and driving between 20-30 mph in the tire tracks wherever they may lie.
In a world that made sense, when every single one of your coworkers has the same instinct, reasonably or otherwise, to not risk the drive, your company wouldn’t force you to gamble with your time off, money, or safety. The State emailed their policies and guidelines for inclement weather, so did the parent company Centurion, and so did my subcontracted company RepuCare. No one simply stated, “It’s going to be bad, just stay home, you won’t be penalized.” The same form of tomfoolery and gamble was made regarding Covid. Many found out weeks after they came to work anyway, they could have had paid time-off while they were sick. Now it applies retroactively, because prevention and safety are the afterthought, not the rule.
You might recall, I work on spite. No one can make it? I can. But also, I feel like I’m resisting the nature of several bad games at once. Do I wish to be safe? Sure. Are any of us ever, really? Not in my experience. What do I gain by playing along with even the ancillary presumption? Do I want to engage in a conversation about “going in the hole” and paying back time I took off? That feels gross and insulting. Do I ignore what I’ve learned about snowy conditions and driving, just this once, because we’re all in on the “let’s take off” joke? What else am I doing with my time? Before pausing to write this, I’ve been watching CEUs.
I really don’t like groupthink, not least of which because it seems to only work when it portends lazy and excuse-ridden ends. We don’t all get to collectively think about actual safety and prevention, we get to collaborate and lean into our apologetic reasoning precisely when it feels like we’ll be able to get away with something. We’re not going to get organized and start to think about how we might shape the organization we work for to let us off nicely for the snowstorm. We’d rather practice the easy and self-sabotaging narratives.
I’m not looking for you to give me license to care about myself or the things I do. That’s an extremely important distinction for me. I don’t really care what everyone else is doing. Everyone else seems to fuck themselves, fuck me, or otherwise handicap who they could or should be as a matter of routine. There’s an, not weird to me, argument for getting stuck in the snow as a visceral analogy for the ambivalence displayed by my “leadership.” It’s easy to shift the blame at that point, and even more illustrative of the propensities I despise. “Why didn’t you just stay home?” No, why didn’t you exercise your power to make staying home the most reasonable and easy thing to do? Let me choose to stay home and maintain the meager amount I’m squeezing from your cultural exploitation of me. At least now, I get to own the nature of my “Fuck you, I know the score.”
So I’m at work, watching trainings on addiction and trauma. I’m trying to get my hours in for higher-order certifications. I’m learning of the amazing people with incredibly long outlooks and deep clinical experience. I’m seeing people who have accountability and statistical evidence built into their bones and practice. I’m watching the heroes who don’t get signs planted outside of their offices nor shout-outs on the news. I’m seeing who I should be more like, even if the topic of being deeply involved in peoples’ lives for decades isn’t precisely where my interest or motivation lies. I’m working out a way to incorporate their lessons and my knowledge and ability into something that lends itself to the overall health and stability of society. To that end, I see a direct line from disassociating from toe-in-ground wishy-washy posturing and my capacity to make forthright and bold assessments of how I manifest my larger project. I wouldn’t be here, reflecting. I wouldn’t have a few more hours under my belt. I’d be home, watching TV, cold, thinking about how much I don’t like the penalty for doing so.
Okay, the more concise less abstract portion is over. Now I’ll try to tie it into my other recent experiences and conversations.
One of my coworkers, unprompted, asked me “theoretically” what I thought if I had a friend who told me a guy she was seeing hacked her phone to find out what she was lying to him about. I told her what the 16 year old version of me would have said, “Bitch, that shit’s crazy. What the fuck? You need to run. Totally uncool. Fuck that guy, awkward ass controlling ass behaviors. Shit ain’t gonna stop there.” I also told her what the current counselor would tell her. “That’s an incredible violation of trust and boundaries, and while I don’t know the particulars of how you’re balancing that kind of behavior with what you perceive otherwise that you’re getting out of the relationship, it’s a major concern for me, and both in my experience and from what I’ve learned reading, it seems unlikely it’ll be an isolated event or not escalate into more controlling behaviors.”
She’s also a counselor. She’s in therapy. She relayed that her therapist has told her she’s never been in a healthy relationship, and has told her many, if not all, of the sentiments I expressed about her current enthrallment. Other details include, he’s married, her coping skill is drinking, and she is confident were she to break things off, she would have to find another job, because she could not handle seeing him every day.
I don’t tell you about her because I’m trying to be judgmental or shitty. She’s relevant because in the span of 15 minutes, she invited a stranger into her life’s baggage who told her things she both knows already or has heard a dozen times before, and she demonstrated, quite explicitly, the same kind of downplaying, excuse-ridden, avoidance patterns that underpin the “lesser offense” in the dance to get out of coming to work.
She used broad language. “He checks all the boxes.” Okay, what are those boxes? “We fuck and have intellectual conversations.” Okay, so he checks two boxes. Anything else? A move back to broad language. “He’s just someone it feels good to be around, I don’t have anyone else like that.” So he checks a companionship box as well? Is he the only person you can fuck? “Psh, no.” Do you have anyone else you can speak intelligently with? “No, well, yeah, but not that I’m also fucking.” Do you have general supports in your life, friends or family? “Sure.” So he checks boxes that aren’t so unique, falls well within patterns of unhealthy relationships of the past, and you already know what you should do, but… Eventually, as I kept returning to the idea that she needed to unpack her word choices and get very specific as to what she means regarding who she cares about and what “trust” or “love” were going to mean in practical application, she said, “I don’t wanna do all that work.”
Exactly. I know you don’t. Very few people wish to do the work. There are many reasons for this, not least of which they don’t understand, or feel as deeply, the consequences of doing the work. They prioritize how they feel, who’s giving license, where the next excuse lies, before they even consider the overall or long-term impact. It’s not a factual calculation. She feels a familiar gratification or guilt or undue confidence to pick dramatic and feebly expository language in service to his poor behavior and her lack of accountability. I don’t care how good you are at exploring your bad relationship, we’re prone to do this, root for those we care about, and subsume the best practice to the narrative. I’d never have been in any relationships if I leaned into my perception of my exes and their personal issues or dissatisfaction with me. People deserve you at least trying, right?
Just like you can’t “save” an inmate or your partner, you can’t save your coworkers either. All I can do is hold the value of open and honest communication high in my mind, and practice how I engage in it as often as the opportunity presents itself. I worry about the holistic example she is setting for other people. I worry about her and how she’s otherwise coping with things in her life. I worry about how prevalent the controlling abusive archetypal man is given this kind of license to never face consequences and enlist those he terrorizes into doing so much work in service to his bullshit.
So much hides in the loose language. If you can’t clean up and explicate your language, you’re subject to all the forces wholly ambivalent to how they play out in your life. “Love” in a lazy way, blink and you’ll find abuse. Heard it all before? You’ll start to forget how to listen and turn information into a tool you can use. If you can’t own how fragile, self-destructive, and otherwise ignorant and afraid you are, they win, by default. That’s what it is to exist. Get there first before you start building a personal bible with endless dictums converging on what you’ll give up to a god in lieu of taking responsibility for.
I remember that disconnect. I didn’t have a concept of “personal responsibility.” Things just happened to me, and I suffered them. I suffered beatings from my mom for “bad behavior.” I suffered the oppressive directives of institutional environments. I suffered my poorly understood feelings any time I was surprised or backed into proverbial corner. I was a walking ball of pain with months-long headaches, endless anxiety and stomach butterflies, and a form of know-it-allism that kept me stressed and charged to argue way more than listen.
This is the only thing I’ve ever found that helped. Writing. Trying to take loose words and turn them into specific action. Do I ever “hate my job?” I hate poor leadership, a lack of accountability, and watching demonstrable preventable harm happen as a result. Do I rush to tell you how much I “love” you? I prefer if you can experience my concepts of “commitment” and “honesty” and “working together” and if “love” spills out of my sense that we share those values, I won’t fight back too hard. Do I want to do all this work? Yes. When I started? No. I called myself names. It was messy large blocks of text sewn together with dramatic angsty feeling.
I had to learn how to give myself permission to do and view the work of better understanding myself. I don’t stop at, “I’ve heard that before.” I’m not ashamed of the aspects of my lived experience because I know they share universal themes. I’ve “sat” in the pain and confusion and disappointment and shattered expectations for so long, I just reside there. I’ve incorporated the depths of the pain into, if nothing else, the action step of exploring it. I know I’m going to die, and everything I care about will as well. I know pain isn’t temporary, but I also know it’s naively understood. I know it’s impossible for me to find the balance and deliberate choices to make without owning the worst consequences or a willingness to look at what happened when I didn’t feel I had the power to do something differently.
We’re all responsible for each other and create endless ripples through our personal lives, institutions, and world at large. If you don’t want to take responsibility for that, perhaps better said, if you don’t care that the consequences of eschewing that are coming regardless, to me, it’s a kind of self-righteous suicide. I don’t really want to talk to the person unwilling to do the work. I’m extremely suspicious they’re as proud of themselves and their intransigence as they put on as well. It only works if you work it, and you’re not powerless over your addiction to self-serving denial-ridden lazy bullshit. It’s about asking yourself what your responsibility is in any moment, and then feeling that responsibility move you through the world. You’ll never feel it if you don’t ask, and you’ll never know what the “right” thing to do is no matter how often you profess otherwise. I certainly won’t trust you, as my concept of “trust” isn’t predicated on how good or bad I feel fucking and talking to you. I know my role in life before I get too bogged down in the consequences of my role as “counselor” or “employee.”
I show up for myself, because I’m responsible for everything I touch or wish to be apart of in the future. It doesn’t always feel good, in fact rarely does it feel good, but the alternative is much worse.
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