I have longingly gazed into the eyes of my blog and decided it has been sorely neglected. So I thought I would attend to this forlorn space.
I find that I actually do a lot of writing. Not the exciting, nostalgic, ahh isn't that cute kind of writing. No, I write page after page after page of someone else's life story. I am a reluctant historian. I write about all kinds of things trying to fit a person's life story on two or three pages, or in a four inch square box, depends on the actual document. I write about where a person is in life, how they got there, and my brilliant plan for getting them as far away from where they are as they can possibly get. A lot of it is written in boring technical counseling terms . .Client shared blah, blah, blah, counselor assessed yadda, yadda, yadda, Counselor and client explored this and that an the other thing. The words themselves are generally boring, vague, and uninteresting. You see it is to the client's benefit that enough is written about their hard work to justify a third party paying for their time with me, but vague enough that if anyone ever decided they wanted a peek into that person's world via a court ordered subpoena there would be no information that could potentially be harmful. All day, every day I produce document after document filled with words that mean nothing, yet at the same time everything. I would say on an average day I write the equivalent of a three page paper. On those lucky days when I am writing endless reports outlining someones background, their goals for treatment, and/or the results of their tedious hours of psychological testing I probably increase my production to twenty or thirty pages a week. I am in a constant battle to find just the right words to accurately describe both what I have been told directly, and what I observe for myself. The task becomes so much more challenging because most of what I observe lies in what is NOT said, what is NOT reported, and is usually not physically VISIBLE. I have to make the unconscious, conscious. I have to find the invisible elephant in the room that NOBODY wants to talk about, sometimes not even me. I have to guess, hypothesize, discern, read between the lines. Then find the right words to describe it all.
I feel a great burden when I am forced (and I mean FORCED) to write all of this every day. How does a person put this all on paper? How does one accurately, respectively, honestly tell the story of another's life? How does one chronicle the struggle of one who realizes that they are mentally well enough to know they are mentally unwell yet the truth is they are powerless to make themselves truly be the person they so desperately want to be. How does one document that despair? How does one do justice to the pain of parental abandonment, the violation of intimate space, the tremendous guilt of past mistakes, the darkness of the soul, the grief of psychological torture inflicted by one who was supposed to love, not destroy. What does one say that gives any weight to this human experience?
Sometimes there is hope to write about. Progress made, goals achieved. The human spirit that has triumphed. One would think it would be easier to write about achievements and conquered demons. Yet the words escape me. To capture the strength, the light of the soul which now shines a little brighter, the triumph of overcoming. Those things just can't be fully expressed in phrases like . . .client is making steady progress towards goals this week. When all I really want to say it that against all odds the wonderful, beautiful, courageous person beat all the odds by finding it possible to put one foot in front of the other and free fall off the edge of the highest ledge of the Grand Canyon in the hopes of a promise that they would be better off taking such a desperate step.
So tonight, for this day, these words are for all those courageous, brave souls who entrust me every week to write their history. I regret that there are not words enough to reflect your deepest despairs, your quest for healing, and your willingness to face your worst enemy, yourself, in hopes of overcoming victoriously. I hope my meager words do you justice.
