I’m working in mental health and addictions. same field, same type of work- the type of work I love and care for so much.
Strange and personal, intense and emotional- that is a normal day, to me.

people ask me: how was work? and I say: oh, it was great, it was fine…

i don’t say: well the other night a man almost bled to death- his room looked like a scene from a horror film...

I don’t say: you see, there were these long clots of blood everywhere...

and I don’t talk about the kid who was telling me, over and over:
I should just take a knife and cut my throat. I’m going to take a knife and cut my throat. I’m trash. I should die. I’m going to cut my throat...

I don’t talk about the tears and the pleading and the blood and the seizures.

I shrug, and I say: oh, it was fine.
and then we get on with it. cause really, people don’t want to hear that shit.

this is my normal. this is a normal day to me.

and then I walk home. and I sweep my floor and I do the laundry and I sit in the sun and read and I make dinner.

I get caught sometimes between the pendulum swing, between the heavy vacillations of here and there. my life, their lives.
I forget how to have “normal”, polite conversations with “normal” people...

I’m so accustomed to having these very heavy, confessional and personal conversations, that it’s become my set point.
to be honest, I’m more comfortable with emotional topics and uncomfortable things than I am with polite banter and daily chatter...

I’ve become accustomed to saying and hearing what most people would deem to be too much.

I’ve been doing strange things like reading the Aeneid and Inferno. reading and re reading lines like:

Grief and vengeful Care have made their beds,
and pallid Sickness lives there,
and sad Old Age,
and Fear,
and persuasive Hunger,
and vile Need,
forms terrible to look on, and Death and Pain:
then Death’s brother Sleep, and Evil Pleasure of the mind,
and, on the threshold opposite, death-dealing War,
and the steel chambers of the Furies, and mad Discord,
her snaky hair entwined.....

I’m looking at old lithographs of Italy and listening to records and thinking about going to Lady Mae Uniforms and buying a nurses dress and wearing white canvas deck shoes. and growing my hair long and moving to the country so I can be alone with my books and words and so I can ride my bike to the farmers market and maybe keep bees so I can have my own honey.

and I’m thinking about that summer that I only would eat plain white rice, with chopsticks from a blue and white dish from china town, and a boy wrote me a postcard that said he thought I was “elegant like shaved ice in a silver bowl”
and tall grass and clean laundry on the line.

did you know that I have good books and I have matching sheets.

these are the things I am thinking about.

this is the first time since 2005 that I have lived and worked in the same city.

it feels like a vacation. it feels unreal. I can have a life. I can come home at the end of the day. my phone isn’t ringing and ringing and ringing. there’s no great urgency or sense of panic. I don’t have a bag packed by the door. it’s not all on my shoulders.
I go to work. I help people. I laugh and talk with my colleagues. I do some paperwork and then I come home.
it’s amazing.

you can’t imagine the relief I feel. you can’t imagine the weight that’s been lifted.

I didn’t even know I’d been carrying it.

“Burnout is a symptom of a person not being currently able to clearly discern their current primary needs and personal rights, set and stick to realistic local and long-term personal priorities, and assert and enforce appropriate personal boundaries (limits) with (a) themselves and/or (b) other people.”
Peter K. Gerlach MSW

which is to say that I hadn’t been paying attention to who I am, my values, my sense of what’s right, my expectations, hopes, dreams and knowledge of the contribution that I feel called to make.
I was too burnt out, too confused to see my life and the path I was on clearly.

now, for the first time in years and years, I’m not carrying some big, traumatic psychological buzz of catastrophe everywhere I go...
and now for the first time in a long time I can see and feel clearly. I feel in my body. I feel grounded.

there are some conversations I wish I could do-over from this winter, this spring. there are some things, emotions and drama I wish I could minimize, edit, rearrange, clarify or respond to. but I can’t.
I went through what I went through, I am where I am. I hope that even as I bottomed out I helped more than I hurt. I’m sad at what I might have lost... but I’m here and I’m okay. I’m better than okay.

I woke up with this feeling like I lost something. I had vivid dreams last night, dreams about someone and I woke up and realized that they weren’t here, that it was just a dream. and I felt all disconnected and sad.

we were in a large hotel room. in a huge, winding hotel at some function, surrounded by water and people. we were in a room with 2 rooms and no door. I was wearing a sweater with a hood and this person was sheltering me from the chaos. standing close to me. they were telling me that they were thinking about me and my warmth and wondering if they made the right choice. and my heart ached, and I wanted to talk but I couldn’t speak, because I realized that I was asleep, and this was only a dream.

I woke up with this strange, longing bewilderment.
I woke up feeling haunted. it was a mistake, this is all wrong, this still feels wrong.
there’s no sense in trying to figure it out the reasons, there are no reasons or clear answers. I’m obliged to accept things as they are. I’m obliged to accept that dreams aren’t real, that they don’t mean anything.

I’m trying to fight my superficiality, my shallowness, so as to try to come at life without unreal expectations or demands. to speak carefully and truly without an overload of bias, hurt, hope or arrogance, but it’s hard sometimes. It’s hard to tell the difference between what is true, and what I want to be true.