At some point, I just have to start this damn thing.
I mentioned to my supervisor that I analogize my work life to the amounts of
proverbial shit I have to eat. Groups, while making me eat considerably less,
still lets some shit rest on each bite. In an ideal situation, much as when I’m
eating actual food, there’s no shit in it. I don’t mean trace amounts because
we’re all covered in poo particles. I mean a noticeable, unnecessary smell,
flavor, and consistency that poisons the fundamental nature of the meal.
Driving 3 hours round trip in a truck, for 10 months now, to conduct a remote
role, that’s shit. The shit consists of the sentiment, “Well, you’re technically a hybrid-role counselor. Yes, and you’re technically an out-patient clinic who
happens to admit people you shouldn’t and betrays your pill-mill nature with some
regularity.
I also recently spoke to my reoccurring dream of being, less “trapped” in a
mall or big house, but sometimes I’ll find myself just looking for the exit,
and I never find it. I have an idea of where it is, I speed walk my way to
where I think I need to go, but then the hallway bends in a way I don’t recognize,
or the stairs let me out to the wrong floor, or the final 50 feet extend and
get bogged down with rows of obstruction.
My supervisor, in response to my shit-eating analogy said, “Well, nothing’s
perfect, right?” I quickly retorted that I’m not after perfection, I just don’t
want to eat shit. Whether I found the front door, or safely landed after
jumping out of a window, I want to find the exit, and I’m irrationally trapped
for what amounts to a lack of imagination or need to wake up.
A common sentiment from the people in Groups is about how they need the
structure and accountability. I’m told fairly regularly that it’s appreciated
when I, “call me on my shit.” The “shit” clients are referring to is the vague
distance-building language they use to skirt past intentionally using a coping
skill or engaging in self-care. It’s when they work themselves to death for
people who don’t give a fuck about them and then they ask for a dose increase
before trying to balance their day or setting a boundary. This is where I can
never take credit for your sobriety, because a persistent boundary or a daily
balanced practice are merely my suggestion after observation. You either do the
work or not.
How do you obligate someone to the work of being their own source of structure
and accountability? I implement literal accounting in mindfulness exercises. I
hold my people to rules for how the group will be structured. You hold the line
and wait. The longer you hold the line and wait, you get “institutionalized”
psychologically. We’re the products of a lot of line-holders, healthily or
unhealthily. It’s why I have a degree and nightmares in my 30s that I haven’t
done my homework. It’s why most of the world, regardless of their health, status,
or intelligence, is on some level paying the bills, staying alive, and using
language that suggests no genuine desire to be a “leech.”
They’re much more fragile lines than we wish to believe. It’s only a decision
away to violate a norm or create something with its own lines that challenges
via its very existence. The trap people get into is believing they are
establishing new norms or that they’ve created anything in the wake of their
reaction to the current standard. To react, destroy, or protest is
categorically different than building, protecting, and incorporating. One
leaves you at the mercy or folly of what you’re reacting to. The other is
filled with work and opportunities if only it can be recognized, maintained,
and celebrated.
Work, in my experience, speaks for itself. I, pretty habitually, do as good if
not the best job at whatever, at least in a professional context. I clean
deeper when I’m scrubbing bathrooms. I’m efficient in my driving and notes. I
manage time, people, and policy with ease. This keeps my name out of genuine
contention about my value, for all it also conjures regarding my personality. I
celebrate myself. I reward myself. I refuse to play along with nonsense when I don’t
have to and I don’t lie to you or myself. I work to find the truth of the vagaries
in my feelings and ambiguous nature of my motives. The blog, for the infinite
amount of things it might say, will speak for itself when I’m done. I’m
working.
I had a mild panic moment thinking about my spending. I almost forgot, at least
bodily, that I’ve already done the math. When I did it again, I discovered that
even including my bills for the rest of the year, all of my spending, driving,
food, parking, shows, airfare, etc. amounts to just over one paycheck a month
if I stay till the end of the year. If I radically dial back my spending, I’m
still out of debt in 3.5 months. 98% of my debt is shows still to come, and my
new computer. I, still, just don’t really care, even when my body wants to
forget here and there.
I do feel trapped, which is nothing new. I’m trapped by the absurdities of my
business relationships, the insurance fuckery and capitalism, and even the
weather. A tornado blew away houses kinda like mine about 30 minutes away, so
now I spend another $1,000 a year in insurance. I can’t make our therapist
answer the phone or troubleshoot a login issue preventing us from moving
forward to get empanelled with Medicaid and Medicare. I’m born to a country that
doesn’t believe you should pay for anything related to health and goes out of
its way to corrupt the systems that tried. Where’s the exit?
I suffocate on just immensely oppressive irony as well. You know how I’ll find
a girlfriend? Get verbally and physically abusive. I’ll find someone willing to
bail me out after I go to jail after we fight. I’ll find someone who in private
will defend me and speak highly of how good and honest I am in how I contribute
to working things out together. If I start gaslighting, the desire to have kids
will overwhelm her. If I develop a drug habit, we’ll get a prime opportunity to
discuss all we’ve overcome together. If I just cheat instead of look for a way
to be open, she’ll cry that I’m not fucking her enough!
You have a lot of money? Cool, why don’t you use your position in life to back
yourself into a corner that needs someone like me to prompt you to be mindful
about how often you’re screaming at your loved ones. I hope your newfound peace
and clarity will allow you to thrive. God knows I’m not working to open my
pool, fixing up my side-project house, or getting together with my extended
family that doesn’t try to eat each other alive.
My most panicked and desperate friends will occasionally reach out to me, either
looking for solidarity of the sort I’m often unable to provide, or because they
know, in fact, how I will respond and then that can be used as the pretext for
lashing out. It’s very weird. I can tell they can’t tell they’re doing it, but
in magnificent feats of irony, the once (for “fun”) time I might ask for help
(or hell, lunch), it’s crickets, excuses, distracted distance, or inevitably
wholesale silence if not outright banishment. It’s pretty crazy-making
actually, and I think it speaks to why I’m so enthralled with compelling messy
family depictions on TV. Do I really wanna be one of the Shameless
characters? Fuck no. Do I want to be on the verge of death wandering about the ‘verse?
(if you know, you know.) Again, fuck no.
We don’t see what we have. You might profess to want structure and
accountability, but it’s baked into what you’re doing, or not, already. You
have to look for it. You have to know what it sounds like and speak the truth
of it into the world. If I carried on, you might get the impression I’m envious
or jealous of the people I see living with relative blindness to the nature of
their different privileges. I’m lucky enough to know it’s not about me or them
though. We’re all plugged into the inescapable. There is no exit, and the task
is to make peace with wandering around. You can wander with an abusive partner,
all the money in the world, or with a series of habits that serve to distract,
but you can’t not wander unless you choose to stop, set up camp, and draw a
line.
I have a lot of lines. Probably more than can be accounted for, but they come
through when I write. I’m not going to get caught up in lies. I can’t think
straight, feel good, plan, stay organized, be righteously indignant, or care
about literally anything if I can’t find as true an understanding of something
as I might. You get up and arms about the issue of the day? I’ll keep asking
the annoying question until you remove yourself from the reactive space. I
think J.K. Rowling is running that program at present. I pay attention when my
body crosses lines and explore why. I’m willing and practicing the habit of
asking if new ones need to be created and if I’ve crossed one.
I’m not going to be pushed at work into a space where every time my phone goes
off I feel stressed or performatively sigh. I’m not going to let my finances
get lost in a sea of favors or sentimentality. My cats aren’t guaranteed a spot
in my lap. Everything I’ve achieved so far, and plan to get in the future, has been
me building the kind of environment in which I hope to thrive. I get to make
the drives to my shows, I don’t “have to.” I get to build on my land. I get to
play, read, and watch what I want as I please. My conversations about my
business are about what meetings I can get invited to, not “If I had my own, I
could…” I have my own, and I do.
There’s $700 sitting in my account that wasn’t there a month and a half ago. I’ve
spoken with most of the surrounding probation departments (those people are
incredibly hard to get on the phone.) I’m showing up on provider lists and
getting called. The larger context is still a series of larger mouthfuls of
shit, but there’s my miraculous unsullied seed waiting to sprout. The watering can,
soil, air, and gardener are all covered in shit, but the work and the ideas
that allow the seed to grow form the protective lines worth holding.
It's incredibly lonely, but not lonelier than playing dress-up and pretend. I
can make peace with my missing perspective regarding the relationships I
thought I was forging. I’ll run on the fumes of my spite until it kills me. It’s
movie-magic that puts the whole crew or family on the same page. It’s fake. It’s
not something to aspire to what you see on screen, anymore than it is to aspire
to the cartoonish mythologies that plague pathological families and religious ideologies.
You’re working regardless. Either to normalize shit-eating, sound-making (a lot
like saying words, but not quite), and distancing from even the memory of what
it takes to be an accountable world builder.
