Ah, Vengeful and Torturous God, We Meet Again

Today...

10:20 Optometrist’s appointment. I am getting headaches, and I think I need glasses. The optometrist agrees. She examines my eyes and quizzically notes that my pupils are different sizes. She tells me I need to go to a neurologist. I ask…why? There are a lot of potential reasons, apparently, but the ones that stick out for me are: Brain tumor, Brain Tumor, BRAIN TUMOR…there was Aneurism, too, but it just doesn’t have quite the same effect. I pick out pretty frames, I pay hundreds of dollars, I rush back home.

1:20 I am twenty minutes late for my psychiatry appointment. I apologize profusely…I had this eye thing, and Brain Tumor, and then the bus took soooo freaking long and I was only home for three minutes to feed my dogs and… My psychiatrist nods sympathetically. I then begin talking about My Angst. My Angst of the day involves my mother, and how when I was a wee muffin (five or six) my mother told me that she didn’t want me and wanted to put me in foster care, and how I remember playing with my dolls sadly and telling them that they were bad and that I was sending them away for being so bad…and how, while I know objectively that this memory is heartbreakingly sad, I don’t feel sad, or angry, or really anything. I cry, though this doesn’t help me feel any less emotionally stunted.

3:05 I am late for a job interview. I wander upstairs and get lost - I can’t remember the name of the woman I’m meeting. Finally she rescues me. I had applied to this organization over a month ago - two of my friends work there, in supported housing for the mentally ill, and get paid good money to play on Facebook during overnight shifts. I want to be paid good money to play on Facebook, and it sounded like a good, low key match to compliment my stressful doom-filled job.

This woman informs me that…no. We don’t want you to work in our supported housing. We want you to work in our community outreach and drop-in program. Also, this isn’t an interview, the job’s yours if you want it. It will be better if you work full time, but casual to start is good. Let me describe how this job embodies all of your hopes and dreams.

Seriously…what just happened here?

3:55 I make it to work with five minutes to spare - I'd already called them to let them know I would probably be late because of my total failure at life, and also bad traffic. I am still filled with shock and glee, my mood resolutely happy, though a little concerned by all the black helicopters. I’ve noticed at least four over various parts of the city all day, hovering weirdly, making life creepy. I remember how strangely slow the buses seem…and then I remember the same odd, creepily slow transit in London on the day of the bombings. (I was living in London and slept through the first set, but was traveling to work when the second [failed] suicide attacks happened two weeks later. I met the bomb squad, and the Israeli prime minister. I drank too much. It was a good summer.)

I check my friend the interweb. There are no reports of bombings, or protests, or anything at all that can explain the weirdly congested traffic and the circling black helicopters. I wonder if the Americans have invaded and no one else has noticed.

I finally find an article from the week before mentioning the start of training operations for the Olympics Security Force, which is largely the American military. Some operations are entirely covert, and some visible to the public, playing out a number of scenarios…I assume that this must be it. I feel pissed off that I was forced to relive my experience of domestic terrorism for no good reason…and also sort of disappointed. I know that is wrong…but…I do find catastrophically monumental world events kind of exciting.

7:30 Our cook is in a foul mood. I ask a different coworker if I’m maybe being rude or at least sort of annoying, because our cook is responding to every word I say as if I’m spraying her with holy water. It’s completely perplexing and I’m taking it personally…she is doing the opposite of everything I say the moment I leave the room. She is not putting enough desserts on the dessert trays and ignoring me when I tell her so and then getting mad at me when I ask for the second dessert tray because the first one is gone already. She is ignoring me when I suggest limiting the amount of choice in the meal in order to deal with the huge backed up line and our shortage of volunteers (we need six, we have two, can we maybe only have one choice of salad at a time when there's three types of bread?). She ignores me when I suggest she takes her break soon so that we all have time to take a break, and she rolls her eyes at me when I ask…really? Eye rolling? What the Freaking Hell, Cook??

I ask the other coworker what is going on. She has no idea but agrees the cook is way out of line. She notes that I am the senior staff member on that night - I am supposed to be in charge. I am incredibly perplexed by the cook's behaviour...I ask what I possibly could have done…I was in such a good mood…I helped out and was nice and was asking her about her day…WHY??

Before leaving the centre, the cook looks at me with a smirk and a giggle when an intensely high young girl mentions suicide. I do not think I like the cook.

10:00 The same very high girl is on the floor in tears. I’ve been helping her all night - I set her up with a shower and bandaged her bleeding abscesses, and I snuck her Polysporin and eye shadow and an extra cookie. She is sweet and intelligent and she does not want me to feel sorry for her, but she’s also in the fetal position and talking about wanting to die, so it’s hard. She wavers between intense anger towards a fellow participant who was rude to her, sobbing apologies, and wondering why her family never loved her. She tells me that she had seen a doctor who refused to prescribe her Ceroquil - a daily medication people take for anxiety. My coworker tells me she’s also very high on crack, which provokes anxiety and erratic behaviour. My black little heart is breaking. She insists she should kill herself, and maybe that other girl, too. When I try and sit close to her she begins banging her head against a wall.

I do not want to call the police. I do not want her to be cuffed, or hog tied, or thrown in a psych ward against her will. I do not want her to meet more doctors who will treat her like dirt because she’s native, or who refuse her anxiety meds because she’s homeless. I do not want the Vancouver police, with their fondness of tasering the mentally ill (and beating up racial minorities), anywhere near this girl or our centre. The week before, I paid off a $600 ambulance bill resulting from some well-meaning friends dialing 9-1-1 after I’d called them in tears and then turned off my phone…the police barged in to my house a half hour later with large guns and tasers, asked my roommates if I was violent, told me I’d get a criminal record if I didn’t go willingly in an ambulance to the hospital…where I went and was released two hours later. I do not want to call the police.

I call the police, and spend ten minutes on the phone relaying the young girl’s every movement as she wanders around the room, distraught, sits down, bangs her head against the wall, gets up again. She asks for a snack so she can leave. I apologize and say I’ll get it once I’m off the phone. The police arrive. She cries and sobs and yells while I cower in the kitchen and feel ashamed. They ask her if she has anything in her pockets, and she tells them she has her crack pipe. She reaches for it and they promptly restrain her and place her in cuffs…she keeps crying and notes that her nose needs to be wiped, please, I need to wipe my nose, I’m crying, what am I supposed to do, can someone help please…Ivy, Ivy, where are you, please…

I go to the staff room because I think we have tissues there. I can’t find them. It takes me ten minutes to find the stash I keep in my locker, buried, and by the time I’m on the floor again she is already out the door.

I wander the centre and mop the floors and feel like a zombie. I want, want, want to cry.
I go home.