See Me Again Soon

"See me again soon" she gently suggested after the bell had abruptly halted our session.

"Maybe" I told her honestly as I grabbed my bag and left her office.

I was exhausted. Why did I feel so drained?

The hallways were teeming with students as I just stood there. I felt like a stationary boulder misplaced among the coursing rapids.

"You were speaking to the counsellor?" I turned. it was an old buddy of mine whom I had drifted from recently.

"Nah. She just wanted to talk to me about my classes." I responded a little too quickly. "Making sure I wasn't going to fail math this term."

He nodded his head; unconvinced. Asked me how I had been and where I had been and when we were going to hang out.

I looked outside at the pouring rain as if in a trance. My mind was playing and replaying the past half hour with her.

It was unmistakable; I did feel lighter.

"I'll message you" I told him, though we both knew that I wouldn't, and I plugged myself into my music, threw my hood over my head and braced myself for the elements.

The rain.

I love the rain.

The chill, the smell, the sound.

I remember my dad taking me for walks in the rain when I was a little kid. Holding his hand, splashing in puddles, feeding the ducks, getting soaked and not caring at all as we laughed and laughed.

What happened to that kid?

How did I get here?

Where is the exit door?

I walked home through a path in the park. Wet socks.

She was nice, that counsellor.

In the past, counsellors called home, talked to parents, broke confidence. Made things worse.

I wanted to trust her, but...

I was standing in front of the playground where I used to play often as a child. Swinging so high, almost touching the branches of the tree that we also climbed and ran around.

Happy memories.

Why was it so hard to talk about how I feel now?

I want to, but something always stops me.

Am I stopping me?

Why?

Rain drops were making a loud sound on the metal slide and rolling down forming a small pool at the bottom. Could I allow myself to roll down the slide towards feeling better? More like myself again?

I looked up at the sky. It had been a little bit sunny only a short while ago when I was sitting in her office and I smiled at the a-little-too obvious connection. Does she have that sort of power?

Sometimes, when I sit in my room, I just get so angry that I want to punch the walls or break my computer. I want to slap myself so hard that I feel something so I can change. Everything sucks right now and I hate it!

I wondered how I must look to someone sitting in a car driving by - standing in the wet playground, holding the slide for support, not budging. So stubborn.

She wants to help.

I need help.

It's so easy, and yet it isn't.

My phone buzzed. Mom. Wondering where I am and if I'll be home soon.

Staring at the words on the small screen as if they were a foreign language.

It buzzed again "Come home soon."

I had shut her out and treated her like crap, and yet, she was still there and I knew deep down that she always would be.

She had done nothing wrong. I had made her feel that she had.

I was exhausted, but I couldn't trick myself any longer as even that little bit of sharing and revealing how I felt did feel good.

I gripped the slide and whispered to myself "let's give that counsellor another try."

And I started off towards the warmth and dryness of home.

I Want You Back

"I want you back!"

I cried on the phone, uttering the well-rehearsed line that had been spinning around and around in my head like a broken record since she'd left.

She sighed a really long and exhausted sigh.

I sat there on the stairs with my eyes closed almost shaking as if an addict badly in need of a fix.

"I really don't know what to say Sam. We've been over this."

She's right, we had.

Many, many times.

The last one was in this very room like a war zone strewn with suitcases and boxes full of old CDs and recipe books and bent photographs of happier more peaceful times.

How I had tried and tried to convince her that I would change and that she shouldn't leave and that I needed her and would do whatever I had to to make her feel loved.

She had just shaken her head sadly, refusing to make eye contact as if the very contact would reduce her to a single, dead, weightless leaf falling and blowing aimlessly in the wind.

But she was much much stronger than that and me and she just put her head down, flipping yet one more page as she rapidly neared the end of this chapter, of this book eager to the go to the bookstore and buy a new one.

Deep down I knew that when her legs and feet carried her out of that door she would be gone forever. I could have been a statue or a mannequin or hibernating bear in my inability to halt her progress.

And now, on the phone weeks later, it was as if I didn't know her; had never known her.

The her I had known and loved and spent hours laying in her arms on bus rides and grass fields and my beat-up sofa were in the rearview mirror of a car speeding away at top speed as if it had just been involved in a bank robbery.

And I knew she was right. I had changed. I spent too many hours at work and with buddies playing golf and I had taken her for granted even though I always said that I wasn't and I never would.

In the back of my head, I thought she'd always be there until she wasn't.

"Please come back."

She paused and in that moment I could picture her crystal clear. Running her hand slowly through her hair, sitting in her wicker chair by a window, drinking coffee, picking the cranberries out of her cranberry walnut muffin with a wistful look on her beautiful face.

"Be well, Sam. I have to run."

And with that she hung up the phone and I was alone again leaning hard against the wall of the room that we had shared.

I needed to stop doing this to myself.

It was over.

Time Keeps on Ticking

Life is so busy.

What I would give for a day off, or a relaxing afternoon or even just a few extra deep breaths.

Give me a second, or two. Wow! Who knew breathing could be enjoyed so thoroughly or so deeply?

From my perspective, days just go flying by. Or it is possible that I am flying and the days are just stationary? And does it affect things at all if I ride a stationary bike each Sunday afternoon for 45 minutes although by the 40 minute mark a variety of parts of my body have gone numb. Numbness is not just a state of mind, at least not during those 45 minutes on Sundays.

Life would be so different if I did fly and I almost definitely would get over my fear of heights. People are always telling me "just get over it" and I want to yell back "it's easy for you to say, seeing as you are so tall!" If only getting over things was easy, I would have a lot of free time that I could finally dedicate towards stamp collecting, because, as my grandmother always told me "those stamps aren't going to collect themselves". No one, as far as I'm aware, was ever trying to argue that they were.

The months of the calender are always being flipped. Often by hands and once by a carefully constructed "hand" out of paper clips and popsicle sticks that got rejected by the local newspaper when a photo was submitted. I had always wanted to submit a photo, and then after I had, I felt so empty and wished I could have it back. I wonder if the months are excited when it is their turn? And how they must feel when the "party" is over? We so easily turn the page to the next month and never stop to consider how the old month feels. Well, I do. And my co-workers give me a whole lot more space now.

Winter turns to spring which morphs into summer and then it becomes winter again and sometime after that fall (I may have the order a bit messed up, but that's not important right now). Seasons come and go and come and go - it is almost dizzying! Or, there is at least some chance, that my spinning around while my wife rapidly flashes different coloured lights in my eyes, is making me dizzy. I wish more things morphed before my eyes - it just seems like it would be a good show and we are all craving new and better shows these days what with the almost literal drivel they are attempting to pass for shows.

As the song goes "to every thing there is a season" and I would counter, not every thing. Like probably most things have a season and anyone who claims that they all do, is trying to pull the wool over our eyes just like Paul, that guy up the block whose wool collection is "large" and "mystifying" and "eye-covering". Things do belong in certain seasons and when they aren't placed correctly it is like a fish out of water and not in the fish-having-evolved-past-the-need-for-water-so-watch-out-mammals sort of way. My favourite season shifts from day to day and week to week and month to month making the word "favourite" moronic and totally incorrect, which was my intention all along.

I wish there was an announcement of sorts or a warning that is sort of like an announcement, only slightly more ominous and foreboding, when the last day of summer is here. Maybe I'd value it more and stop acting so blase about it. I am always going on and on about the summer ending and I always have so much attitude about it - I'm like "Oooh! Summer is finally deciding to end! Oooh! I'm soooo scared! Please, pretty please don't end Mr. Summer. Oh, I'm soooo sad. Boo hoo hoo." I see the errors of my ways and I also hear them as I made a series of voice recordings talking all about the various errors that I have made and how my "ways" have been adversely affected. Coincidentaly, I was once voted most likely to adversely affect others in my kindergarten class. You were right afterall, Ms. Brown.

Times passes so quickly, or at least it seems to, that it always seems like it is Wednesday, or Sunday or sometimes Friday. One time I swear there were two consecutive Wednesdays, but on second thought I was most likely wrong. I had a dream once that I was put in charge of everything - a reoccurring nightmare of sorts - and my first order of business was to make an entire week comprised only of Fridays because they are so amazing. But after day 2 I become so depressed and am the target of hate mail (and copious amounts of regular mail too due to a postal error) as Fridays had lost everything that had made them special in the first place and had been reduced to any other "loser" day like Tuesdays. The dream always ends with me eating peanut butter sandwiches on a raft accompanied by a recently fired accountant who may or may not have been born in Russia.

Many mornings I wake up with a start and I find myself sitting up in bed spending far too much time thinking about what day it is and not nearly enough time on more pressing issues like how to get out of bed and where to go once I do this and what would a day be like if I woke up with a stop? 

Mornings often have a feeling of déjà vu accompanied by freshly steeped aromatic tea and flyers demanding that I buy a new table. If I bought a new table each time I was prompted to by these flyers that claim they are my friends, I'd have enough tables to open up my own table store on the side. I always wanted to provide others a vehicle with which to eat upon or under - plus they make great barricades in case you want some alone time and don't feel comfortable using your words.

I really want time to slow down. I'd love for time to quit with the marching already and try a leisurely stroll down on the promenade for a change. "Time stops for no one" is a slogan that I once naively had printed on a 1000 tshirts in hopes that the participants at a forensic scientists conference would purchase them like hot cakes, when in hindsight I should have gone with plan A of just trying to sell them hot cakes as it is a well known fact that after a long evening of DNA work nothing satisfies quite like a plate of hot cakes sans tshirt.

My kids are growing up too quickly, my hair is greying at the temples and a large number of my microorganisms have run out of whatever it is that I was providing them that kept them alive and they have decided to go find a new sugar daddy, literally, as me as a source of seemingly never-ending sugar, was inaccurate on at least two levels.

I'd love to freeze things just as they are right now. Life is pretty great and we are currently experiencing a heat wave, so any spare ice would come in handy. But, you know as well as I, and most likely quite a bit better and more accurately, that time just keeps on ticking as does that timer that says my turn is just about done.

I'd Love to Know

"I'd love to know what you are thinking about right now" I said as yet another long expanse of silence had descended upon the room.

Silence was like snow as it blanketed everything in sight.

He shifted around again and again and again, as if in time with the ticking clock.

Nervously fidgeting, trying to get comfortable as the floor he had so quickly chosen almost 30 minutes ago wasn't at all cushioned or warm.

I am fighting off tiredness that often hits near the end of the day.

Trying to focus.

I take a small drink of water, move my chair closer, sit on my hands.

Encouraging him to speak, to share, to say anything at all in anyway just to get a conversation going so that I had something, anything to work with.

He looked up at me, as if to judge to me. He seemed to be telepathically asking if he could, in fact trust me, and I was emphatically responding "yes, yes you can!"

My voice had been the sole sound in the office, aside from an errant phone call that was probably a frustrated parent, an overworked social worker, an exhausted teacher.

Focussing was such a challenge today.

Blocking the thoughts, important ones and random alike, as they attacked and assaulted my brain.

Staying present, for him, for my own sanity, was so key to my work.

Yet so hard some days.

This was one of them.

My mind drifted to a conversation with my husband that morning that did not go well. Why was it so hard to take my own advice?

Work was providing an escape from the constant challenges outside this room. 

"Here things were easy" I thought as I looked at this sad and angry young man who seemed to be going out of his way to make things not easy for himself.

"I can tell you have a lot going on in your head and I know how hard it is to let someone in, especially someone like me, who you barely know. But I also know how good it feels to share, once you have."

I had spoken words like this countless times to countless students similar to him in the past.

It was an excerpt from one of my many short speeches that I truly believed.

But did he?  

I was playing the part of the used car salesperson, once again, trying to get him to buy the sedan with low mileage that I knew he'd love.

Could I crack his shell?

Refusing to look at me, he mumbled how life sucked.

It was a start.

"I'm so sorry to hear that. Do you want to tell me more about how life sucks for you?"

He quickly looked up to meet my eyes. Did I really care as much as I sounded, he must have been wondering? And why? Why would anyone care for me?

"I really care and I want to listen and to help. It doesn't have to be this way."

He opened his mouth and he was shaking slightly. He looked away. And then he spoke about being alone. A lot. Like all the time. 

He spoke about not caring. About anything. At all.

He spoke about being alone in his room, in the school, in the world.

I fought the urge to tell him I knew how he felt, because did I?

And then just as it felt like we were finally starting, the bell to end the school day rang. 

An odd half-smile crossed his lips and he looked at me as if wondering if he was allowed to leave.

"Well, I guess it is time to go home. I really hope you come see me again soon. Tomorrow?"

He shrugged his shoulders and rose off the floor shaking his leg. "Maybe"

And he left.

Silence.