Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming…

heh. I need to watch that movie again. Dory cracks me the heck up.

So. Worked last nite, it wasn’t horrible, tho I busy the whole nite even tho there were 6 on. Spent a good 3 hours checking in belongings. lah. I haven’t found anything fun in a while, like pot or bullets. eheh. Tho a few weeks ago I opened a lady’s purse and she had a frikkin stun gun!! Geeesh. Oh, I did find interesting cards in one guys wallet last nite- Ku Klux Klan ‘business’ cards? Donna was like “Well….maybe they were just, ya know, marketing…and that’s why he has them in there…” Right. Except. They looked as if they had been in there for quite a while. People generally support the KKK or detest it. Those who detest it aren’t apt to carry their business cards around in their wallets, I don’t think. Then again, they *were* right next to the WWJD cards and 2 dozen pics of children and family and such. So. *shrugs* Needless to say, I was kinda glad that the guy was zonked out on ativan, haldol, and cogentin that they gave him at the ER when he became combative. Along with all of the other drugs that he had put in his own system before then. Which, judging by the tox screen, was quite considerable. Hooray for heroin, that’s what I say. *sigh* He never woke up for us except for a brief few seconds when we were transferring him from the stretcher to the bed. Then there was the lady who was flipping the frick out cuz she thought that the body search entailed a cavity search. Uhm. No. (It entails writing down all the scars, marks, piercings, bruises, tattoos, etc that a person has. And yes, it kind of completely can strip a person of their dignity (no pun intended). But. I at least try to make it as un-unpleasant as possible, ya know? Some of the nurses are just like “take off your shirt, pants, turn your socks inside out as you take them off….” But I don’t ever do that, I just go bit by bit so they’re not standing there in their skivvies for 10 minutes. *sigh* I think that not enough of the people that I work with consider what it must be like for a pt to have to go thru the admission process, start to finish. Or. If they have, it’s been too long and they need to think about it again.) However. She was also refusing to sleep in the QR. Which, if a pt refuses the body search, they’re mostly ‘confined’ to the QR until they agree to it cuz it’s just not safe to allow some people to roam the unit without making sure they have no contraband on them. Granted, 99 out of 100 have nothing and wouldn’t even think of trying to sneak something in. But all it takes is 1.

Ha. Speaking of safety! The NEWEST memo out (Yeah. Think Office Space…) informs us that we are no longer to call the state police to help put a pt in restraints. I was like, fuck that! If it’s 3am and there are 7 employees in the building, all female, several of small stature and several who don’t get around all that well, and there’s a 250lb pt going off the walls and threatening me or other pts or staff, or breaking furniture, I’m frikkin calling the police and whoever else I damn well please! And at first I thought, “Well, I can’t blame this one on the facility…” cuz apparently the other day they were having a crazybad code and were unable to get the guy in restraints, and they called the police and the police wouldn’t come. So. I thought, stupid police are assholes, right? Well. In part, ok. But. What the police said was “Don’t call us if you have out of control patients, you need to have adequate staffing to handle these situation.” Amen, brotha. Of course, that fell on deaf ears. Adquate staffing? For the current milieu?? HA. They’d need at least 3 more people during days, at least. 6 staff to 27 patients, several who are mean and volatile, several who are just plain wacked, and one or two who just like to instigate things…Not a good ratio, IMHO. But they never asked me. And I’ve had words once about it with the DON. She didn’t seem to care about what I had to say. So, ya know. We’ll just wait til someone gets killed. Then p’raps they’ll rethink their ‘policy’ of admitting anyone and everyone who walks thru the door, regardless of medical issues (which, we’re not a medical facility and are therefore ill-equipped to deal with serious health issues) or the fact that they used 12 bags of heroin in the last 24 hours or whatever. But. No. They’d prolly just fire the other staff who didn’t get killed, for not doing their jobs. (mmm, can we tell I love Corporate..??)

Anyways. Not sure how that code I mentioned earlier turned out, except that they finally got the guy in to one of the QR, where he proceeded to bang his head so hard against the door that he broke the window in it. Lovely. That place is a frikkin law suit just waiting to happen. I just pray it doesn’t happen on my shift. :op

What was I babbling about….I dunno. Other than the fact that work was ok. And Jeff said he’d work for me tonite (originally I was gonna go out to my sister’s, and was trying to find someone to work for me so that I could leave today or early tomorrow. I’m gonna wait til next week to go to H’s, but Jeff was willing to work for me and so I agreed. I didn’t tell them that I decided not to go to H’s. But. *shrugs* We’ll just call it a mental health day.)

Speaking of mental health. Therapy today. I was mostly glad to go, as J was on vaca last week and apparently I’m addicted. Plus, there are actually some prominant bright spots in my life. Which is nice. To be able to talk about at least some good stuff.

Anyways. After I found her office (lol. I turned in to the door that I *thought* was the hallway to her office, and came face to face with the toilet…) I sat and watched the (2 new!) fishes for a minute or two while she finished up whatever she was doing on her computer. hehe. She finally got a new laptop dealio. Or at least was using a new one, I forgot to ask/mention it. I never looked real close at the other one, but it was quite possibly older than me. ;o) Ok, not quite.

Lah. I put on some music mmm, Lucy Kaplansky. (And I know that we’ve listened to the cd before but for some reason, I wasn’t recognzing it. P’raps I was just in a different state of mind than I often am. *shrugs*) And Joni Mitchell. I don’t listen to enough Joni. She is like…Comfort Music to me. (A distant relative of Comfort Food.) And Ladies of the Canyon will forever remind me of L.
L:
Annie sits you down to eat
She always makes you welcome in
Cats and babies round her feet
And all are fat and none are thin
None are thin and all are fat
She may bake some brownies today
Saying, you are welcome back
She is another canyon lady

Me:
Estrella circus girl
Comes wrapped in songs and gypsy shawls
Songs like tiny hammers hurled
At bevelled mirrors in empty halls
Empty halles and bevelled mirrors
Sailing seas and climbing banyans
Come out for a visit here
To be a lady of the canyon

lah. So. We talked alot, of course, about AJ. Which was nice and good. Talked a bit about Z and my offherrocker Aunt. Which was also ok. Then we kinda got in to…Issues as related to AJ and I. Which was…not necessarily bad. Just kind of difficult. Definately a bit more than scary. Talking about trust and love and relationships. I dunno. Just. Weird. I mean. I know I babble here at great length about AJ and I. But. To talk about it? Face to face? To acknolwedge this wonderful thing out loud I almost don’t want to, for fear of jinxing it or something. Talking out loud about it might make it disappear…

So. Yeah. Talked about trust. Do you trust me? she asks. My first and immediate response is Yes. But, I also thought about it for a minute. Took each word and said it slow in my head. Somehow, that makes it…more than a question. Or. Something. I dunno. But, the conclusion was still Yes. Of course, then she wanted to know whyyyyy. *grin* I told her it was cuz she had degrees upon her walls. (Anyone who gets that allusion gets a cookie!) Which, she said, was a valid answer. Hmm. What else…everyone I know who knows her trusts her. (hehe. Gotta love small towns, eh? Where everybody knows your name…eesh.) The time factor and the fact that in the years that I’ve known her, she’s not done anything to…break or make me question that she was trustable. (Is that a word?!! Trustworthy maybe? lol) She wasn’t quite satisfied with the Time factor, said that it’s more than length of time, cuz you can know people for ages and never feel that you can trust them. And she has a point. And. I think too, it has to do with how we ‘met’ or whatever. I mean, first of all she was referred to me (no..I was referred to her? Recommended. She was recommended to me) by someone who I trusted (L), who I remember gave me her number but also her email and told me that she was possibly apt to answer the email quicker 🙂 For someone who is/was so totally connected addicted to the computer and internet as I was, that was like…I dunno. It gave me a good first impression? hehe. And actually, she did answer my email right-quick, tho she called, not emailed, back. So there was that.

Then there was the fact that we didn’t even meet face to face til after prolly a month of email communication. Mostly just kind of random banter. She was on sabbatical from teaching that semester, and if I recall correctly, it seemed like she was doing a lot of gardening 🙂 And. I dunno that I woulda been able to just jump in to face to face therapy with someone at that point in time. A month of emails making, basically, small talk (which is ironic, as small talk often bugs the hell out of me, esp. when there are big issues pressing. Tho I s’pose I’ve learned that it has some value sometimes) about thunderstorms and how ants can walk up walls and on the ceiling, and about music. *grin* At some point, I had an Alanis quote as my .sig and she said that she had part of the same song on one of her syllabi. A professor who quotes Alanis Morrissette? I found that to be pretty damn kewl. And I perused her web-site, and she just seemed to be an all-around good-type person. But. Yeah. The easing in with a zillion emails was helpful. I mean, I think we discussed some serious-er stuff, but certainly nothing too intense.

So there was that. Hmm. Then, her office was nice, with puffypaint-decorated rocks and plants trying to escape from the bookshelf and a picasso print on the wall.

I dunno. Why do we trust anyone? It’s hard to explain. And, it’s not always a 100% constant thing. I mean. Well. I guess there aren’t really times that I doubt her trustworthiness-es. But certainly there are times when I doubt, when I can’t figure out why or how in gawd’s name she puts up with the likes of me after so long. Especially after my ability to pay went down the drain. And again when my insurance ran out.

I do have to wonder how and why, actually, I did decide to trust her. Especially since mum is NOT at all enamoured of therapy or psychologists (an irony, as she’s been a social worker/counselor type person for decades…) and I s’pose she (along with Society At Large) instilled in me the belief that no one does anything just to be nice or just to help. Everyone has an ulterior motive. A personal agenda. There is no such thing as a free lunch. And, yes, along the way that money was…the only reward? That money was the only thing to gain or benefit from doing anything. So. Yeah. Mum is very money oriented. I don’t think that she believes in altruism. She didn’t trust therapists in the first place and she trusted them even less so when they worked pro bono. And, admittedly, there are times when I’m desperate to jump from the therapy ship, that I entertain that same attitude, cuz it makes it easier or gives me a valid excuse for running away- it’s not fair to receive without giving some sort of compensation. And I still often feel like I -am- just wasting J’s time, that I’m getting something for nothing and that’s not fair or right of me. I’m sure that I ever do quite understand what she gets from the countless hours of time she spends dealing with me and that she continues to keep me on as a client merely out of a sense of obligation or something. But. *sigh* I dunno. She’s quick to point out that it’s her choice as to how she spends her time, so.

Anyways. Hmm. I had other reasons that I said. uhmmmmm…Oh, I also said that part of it is that perhaps I felt that there had to be someone to trust, so she perhaps won a bit by default! hehe. But I don’t s’pose that that’s the reason I continued to trust.

I guess I don’t really know what prompted me to trust J. All of the above? Desperately needing someone to trust + being recommended to someone who had awesome taste in music + a general assumption that psychologists are meant to be trusted (uh, prolly not a great assumption, but in this case it was true, so.) Perhaps I just took a leap of faith without realizing it? It’s hard to distinguish sometimes, the difference between a leap of faith and just simply jumpfalling off the edge out if ignorance or desperation or stupidity or whatever. I guess that I’d like to say that I thought about it and contemplated it and had definitive reasons for letting go and trusting and letting her in. But I don’t know if I did. I mean, yeah, I thought about it and contemplated it and fought/fight it at times. But partly I think it came about because I’d try not to think about it, and just ignore the fact that I was doing it. Cuz otherwise I woulda been scared shitless and unable/unwilling to allow anyone over the wall. Which. Prolly woulda ensured that I’d be nothing but ashes tossed to the sea and a vague memory in the back of a few peoples’ minds by now.

Uh. Wow. That was a bit of an epic saga, wasn’t it? Oops.

We talked about AJ too. And how things were going. I prolly said that already. And how it was somewhatreally scary how fast everything goes. And how she just, in a way, just snuck in without me totally realizing it. And J just said …that’s what love is…

It’s odd that sometimes talking about love apparently makes me just as anxious as talking about all of the bad stuff. It’s like…I shouldn’t be talking about it. I shouldn’t go on and on to her about this wonderful blue eyed, faux-red-headed amazing person because…it’s frivolous and potentially oh lord, i hope not!!! fleeting matter of little or no consequence. Hearing J talking about love and knowing that she’s talking about it in relation to me? Weird. Not altogether right. Incongruous. I mean. Yeah, we’ve talked about M and DB and RB and Sal and Dor and BC and D and all of my friends here, and I love all of them, some to varying degrees. But some just as intensely as I love There it is again, my brain catches on that word and makes my fingers pause. Me? Loving someone like that? AJ. I mean, in a different manner, of course. But still love. But. It. Kinda has a new meaning, another different meaning, now?

And. And perhaps that’s why J said something to the effect of…love AJ as AJ. Not as anyone else…

Uhm. And randomly? I just realized something that’s prolly blaringly obvious. This talk of love prolly makes me uncomfortable/anxious because…it’s an emotion. not just a thing. And it’s a strong one. And, like anger, I’m not altogether sure what will happen if I fully acknowledge it, and let it run its course. Part of me just….equates all strong emotions with painful, uncontrollable, catasrophic outcomes. I just don’t really know how to deal with the intensity, good or bad I guess. I dunno. I dunno.

But. So. Yeah. Therapy was reallygood today. And I’m *really* liking J’s new office. I did’t hate or dislike the last one. But this one is just…it has windows to the outside, I can tell if it’s sunny or raining or cloudy or windy. It’s on a quiet street, more in a neighborhood than squat in the middle of the business district (such as it is here…lol) And it’s not like we could hear trucks passing and people chattering as they walked down the street at the main st office. But. I liked finishing up and walking out the door onto a street that I’ve walked a thousand times, the street that my heart still sometimes feels is Home. Her first office (well, the office that she was in when I started) was at the end of a similar street, and apparently I didn’t altogether realize how much I missed the serenity and safety of the trip to and fro. Weird and sad how sometimes we don’t miss things til they’re gone, or don’t realize they’re gone until we get them back….

Anyways. Afterwards, I walked to M’s and fed the cats, fishes, hamster. Played with the hamster for a little while. Gathered the mail, watered the plants, cleaned the cat pan, picked a zucchini from the garden, stood on the stairs and looked at all of the pictures that I could just sit and look at forever (Seriously. I can’t really go up or down those stairs without pausing for at least a few seconds to look at one picture or another…it’s a habit, an addiction!)

I’m tired. And AJ hasn’t called yet, so I dunno if I’m going up to visit her tomorrow or not :o/

But I’m certainly glad that I’m not working tonite. I….I almost feel kind of relaxed, a little. How very odd! lol. Now I need to clean *my* cats’ box and sort thru *my* mail and water *my* plants 🙂