The Heart of It

Noblelee and I selected work and mental health as this week’s theme. I wrote and wrote and did what I could to wrap it up once I hit five pages. That is too damn long. I looked for ways to cut it, and did a little, but I also found more that I wanted to say. Read what I wrote here if you like, but last night, in the midst of a gnarly migraine, I had a moment of clarity: the fact that mental and emotional challenges make it difficult for many of us to work like other people do is the heart of the matter; it is central to the reason we created OnSurviving. I expect we will touch on this issue again and again in many different ways.

Frankly, I wouldn’t need people to understand my struggles, or what has helped me make it through as well as I have, if our society organized work and other systems differently. I wouldn’t need to gather the nerve to share my pain if people like me were allowed to do the kind of work that is fulfilling for each of us while also having plenty of room for us to care for ourselves. I wouldn’t need to shine a spotlight on my soul if those efforts to care for ourselves didn’t threaten our jobs and/or our ability to pay for our other basic needs, like having healthy food to eat and a safe place to live.

It is true that Noblelee and I want others to hear that they/you are not alone. It is true that we want people who read or listen to us to find some hope and maybe even some good ideas for what you could do to help yourselves or someone you love, given that our systems seem designed to secure our failure if we don’t have others in our lives to pick up the pieces. It is true that we want to eradicate the sense of shame this society seems so content to cast on us as we do the best we can with what we have to survive.

That said, my ultimate hope is that we might discover in our stories and reflections some ways to change these systems, to make more room for what we need so thriving (not just surviving) might feel like more of a possibility for us, to stop placing the sole responsibility for change on those of us who may be hanging on by a thread already.

With that in mind, here’s one more story to go with the too-long piece linked above – from the time when I thought my public policy work was over. What do you see that helped me to survive as well as I did? What do you see that could’ve been better?

*****

The porcelain is gleaming…like Boyd's teeth. I’d love to lick those clean – mm! I chuckle audibly at the thought.

I always liked cleaning my bathroom. So satisfying, especially if I had missed a week. The soap scum, dust, dirt, general grime build-up wiped away in minutes to reveal thousands of rays of light sparkling everywhere they land. Ahh. Magical if not for my aching shoulder and spasms in my lower back, not to mention the chemical headache that will overcome me by the time I’m done. Still, magical if I don’t think too hard about it.

This house is bigger than any that I’ve ever lived in. I want to wile away the day in their outdoor kitchen and lounge area, but I have a job to do, and I would be mortified if they found me daydreaming on the sofa. It’s hard enough to make it seem as if their fairy godmother had done the job while they were away – a girl like me has gotta smoke, and it’s hard to hide the evidence in a non-smoker’s space.

I am grateful for the work, even though I’d have to clean five of these houses every day if was trying to make as much as I did in my last job. My body would break long before I reached that goal.

Thank God for my partner and his parents. Without them, we might be living out of our car. I don’t think we could afford rent anywhere, not for long anyway. Without them, I wouldn’t be doing even this work. My partner’s mom set this up; the homeowner is a friend from a support group of her own. She also bought all the cleaning supplies and helped pay for the flyers to get more customers.

I walk the house and gather waste basket contents in one large trash bag, remembering that I was a bit of a snob when I had started earning 6 figures. A bit of a snob – that’s an understatement, I think as I reflect on a drunken rant of mine…do you know how much money I make?? Ugh, gross. I shake my head and take the now-full bag outside.

I remember my old boss telling me how he watched a state agency director “lose her shit” when giving a public statement about some mistake she had made. “She’ll never work in this field again,” he said. I will never forget that. Keep your shit together, I reminded myself over and over these past six years since J died, since hope died in me. At least, don’t let anyone see it when it happens.

After detox, 30 days clean, and the first 2 of 12 steps taken, I thought about getting back into public policy work. After all, I hadn’t lost my shit publicly – just got attacked when I put myself in a dangerous situation…during work hours so my boss had to find out about it, I remind myself while also surveying what now needs to be done in the kitchen. The kitchen with all its crevices and cooked-in grime is the worst. I should’ve started here, gotten it over with. My back already hurts.

“Get me the fuck out of this state!” I had said to my partner on the day of the attack, my forehead swelling from the blows and my heart broken after telling my mother to get out of my house later that day (because she said she had to ask her child molesting husband for permission to have me more in her life, after I told her how much I wanted to be more of a family with her; I think what I really wanted was to feel safe with her). I couldn’t take one more sucker punch from that place – the birthplace of so much pain. We packed the car and headed south the next morning. Several days later, we landed in his parents’ living room in Myrtle Beach. We never turned back.

This state doesn’t like people that think like me, for the most part, and they don’t care about “engaged policy development,” the work that filled my resume since I earned my graduate degree. I tried to get work that required at least some similar skills (loosely interpreted), like event planning and hospitality services. Only one place I applied bothered to talk to me, but that manager said she feared I would get bored. When those efforts failed, I figured I could always get work waiting tables. Though I hated it, I was good at it back in the day. No such luck. Manager after manager told me I was over-qualified. Strip maybe? There were lots of strip clubs around, to go with all the golf courses. I’d seriously thought about it, even looked into whoring, but I had gained eight pant sizes from all the drinking and lack of will to care about my health. The madame wasn’t interested.

Jane, my partner in sobriety, had a little cleaning business, and she said I could do some jobs with her, which I did. We made flyers and posted them all around the city, and we picked up a few new customers to help support us both. In a few weeks though, she started drinking again, and I was clinging to my newfound sobriety with all my might, which meant that I couldn’t be around her except to take her to the hospital when she decided to stop drinking again. And again. And again. Until there was no “again” to be had, her lifeless body discovered by her 12-year old son.

My partner wasn’t having much work luck either – because the jobs he could get were too hard on his leg, the one with the poorly fused ankle after falling off a roof during an HVAC job. We decided to partner up in work as well as in life.

Here I go feeling grateful again, I smile as I glimpse him in the other room dragging the long-armed squeegee down the wall of windows that separated the indoor living room from the outdoor lounge. The last tasks are vacuuming and mopping. We are almost there, then onto the only other customer of the day.

We don’t have much, but we have enough for now.

It may not be sustainable, but I can’t look beyond now. I can’t think about what would be better, what would feel like me, what talents are fading into the past. Just one stroke of the mop at a time, counting the blessings I have to get by: a mate, his helpful family, coffee every morning, enough to eat, a little money coming to make payments on my student loan and other lingering bills, and a safe place to sleep tonight, for now.