Somebody Cares

(pieced together from accounts sent to various people on the 20th of December, 2022, when the events of this story took place)

Today was a crazy day.

I went to my doctor's appointment... And...

• I checked in about the psychiatrist’s assessment, and apparently I officially have a diagnosis now.
  

• I'm being prescribed an anti-anxiety medication to try for four weeks and see how it goes.
  

• My doctor is on board with making the best case he can for my ODSP application, to help me afford the counseling I'm trying to do and the medications we’re going to try.

I told my friends, while I was leaving the doctor's office:

I feel like I've just been handed a huge golden trophy inscribed with the words Somebody Cares. And a little like this can't be happening. This isn't the world I live in.

I.... Think I might be kind of in shock for the next few weeks. Or months. Or years.

The world isn't like this. Friends, scientists, anybody, run scans on the gold in this trophy. Tell me there aren't pockets of depleted uranium in it, because this does not happen.

You see, I had been straining to go along with the motions that a good patient is 'supposed' to go through, kind of like I was following the rituals of a cargo cult. On the one hand I knew people said this was supposed to work, but on the other hand I know about groupthink and the way people repeat and affirm illusions to each other until they believe them themselves... so many reasons not to trust what ‘everybody knows’. ‘Trying’ to have faith and believe, because this too is part of the ritual, but with this deep, grim, hopeless sense of self-disgust for ‘trying to believe’ in something, when, honestly? I didn’t. It had never been true for me that the system gave a damn, would do more than brush me aside with perfunctory motions to get me out of the way of the ‘real’ patients.

To myself as a skeptic, this is anti-praxis, a betrayal of some of the things I actually do believe in, for the sake of things I could only ever pretend to believe in. Praying vainly for supplies to drop from the sky despite knowing the world doesn't work like that because there's just nothing better I can think of to do.

... So then when supply crates do show up, my reaction is ".. Excuse me, the fuck WHAT?"
... Like it almost offends me.

I was getting just about prepared to cope with a world where I might stand up in a protest and be cornered three months later by thugs who curb-stomp my teeth into my brain.
But I am not prepared to cope with this.

So, I needed to be walking, and walked, instead of getting back on the train to go home. Good thing I had the foresight not to commit to anything else today. I walked, and I thought, and felt, and raged, and seemed to realize many things.

This is one of those things, and I really feel it's important to say it, because it came much more quietly than the others in my mind, much more as though I might be tempted not to think it, not to recognize it:

I am afraid of this change. I am afraid it might lead me to gradually forget and bury the story of my pain and what I've been through. I am afraid that stepping into this world where people do care and I am not unwelcome, and starting to acclimatize to it, might erase the furious suffering thing I have been. And I don't want to forget that. That self wants to be remembered. It wants to stay alive as itself.

As I was walking I encountered an opportunity. A situation I have encountered from time to time and wished I had the courage to do more than I did.

I encountered a panhandler with a cardboard sign, begging from the island between lanes in a major intersection.

My first wave of courage was to greet the man amiably, read his sign (no lies from this homeless guy, I want $$ for cigs and rye) and engage in conversation despite the pressure of social encounters and the fear of being rebuffed for intruding. I give him about $12 or so and say, pointing at the sign, “as to that, I hope there'll come a time when you're ready to try something else.”

He thanks me profusely and says he hopes so too.

"In your own time." And we exchange Merry Christmases, and I cross the rest of the road.

As I'm walking away feeling the rush of pride and exhilaration at having faced my fear of being awkward or getting into a confrontation, I have another moment to think about how I wish I could do more. My pride withers as I reflect a little that the kind of thing that really makes a difference is more likely to be having somebody to talk to. ... And it's still only fear keeping me from being that person.
Not too late.

So I turn back around and greet him again, say I know it's awkward to come back like this but I was wondering if you'd like to come walk and talk with me.

And he thinks about that, asks where to. Whichever way, I don't have anywhere I need to be. Maybe I can walk with him on the way to some other intersection he stands at. He agrees.

So, I spend the next couple of hours hanging out with this guy. Hearing about how he lives, what he likes. I tell him about the Too Good To Go app and market it to him by offering to pick up a bag of leftovers from Pizza Pizza so he can see how much food you can get on it for $6. On the way there we run into a free meal stop I didn't know about, and pick up food there too and eat together. He talks about music and comedians he likes. About his attitudes on certain kinds of politics. I share some too, and tell him about how as soon as I saw that things really didn't have to be like this, suddenly my attitude about my family got a lot more angry. He says he understands.

I ask some leading questions, like, "so when you think about these things over and over, is it just the same thoughts over and over in a circle or do you reach new conclusions like more of a staircase?"

Before parting ways, I ask if it'd be too awkward to try to give him more help. What kind of help, he asks. Well, like maybe a back pack and some itching cream for your hand (where he has itchy scabs). I give him my email so he can contact me and let me know where to find him again and what kinds of things we can actually use - and maybe recommend music bands if he wants to.

 

I did something better than I usually dare. And then noticing that it still was not truly up to my own standards, did better still than that.

This is what "doing my best" means to me. Anything less isn't my best, it's me imprisoned in my head, walking away disappointed with the things I wasn't brave enough to do.

I was damn proud of carefully practicing active empathetic listening. Gradually relaxing into mirroring his tone. Keeping my own tone and disagreement lighthearted allowing for jokes while disagreeing with something (such as what it meant to be transgender and the nature of sex reassignment surgery). Letting myself be uncomfortable with his decision to hop the train without paying a fare but respect that that was his decision and not mine. Balancing coming around again to asking about the subjects of his drinking and his disillusionment, where he was at and how he came to be there, with giving him time to talk about other less stressful things.

Letting him give me some advice and empathetic listening too, being enough of myself to be sincere without making the conversation all or mostly about me. That's something I particularly wanted to practice and improve at anyway.

I am proud to be the kind of person who responds like this to the collapse of my worldview; leaping same-day onto an opportunity to pass on the gift of Somebody Cares as best I can, in the hopes that while it won't have as much impact as my doctor had on me (what could?), it may be one of those little things that builds up gradually toward a sea change once somebody is ready for it.

I'm sure I wasn't perfect.

But I'm also pretty sure I did vastly better on net than some of my past counselors have done by me. And I wasn't even getting paid for it.

So there. 

... There's a song I like. There's a line in that song, which I also particularly like.
"And I'm scared, because I've never been so unafraid."