As I started this, I was sitting in a laundromat because my life partner’s father’s washing machine blew a belt. I didnt’t mind being there, even though there were a ton more people than I thought for 08:00 on a Saturday morning, and even though there was a bare florescent light bulb strobing above the only open table, there were also cartoons on the nearest TV so I didn’t mind that, either.
A couple weeks ago, I attended my fifth Violence Dynamics Prime seminar, and while I was there, I chatted with a few of the instructors who make a living sharing what they’ve learned — in a travel-the-world, mass-following, write-significant-blogs-and-books kind of way. I shared with them my first inklings of a nebulous, persistent urge I have to somehow Help People. (Sounds like a good thing, right?) Except I hadn’t really defined almost anything about it for myself.
I’m still not 100% satisfied that I have things nailed down, to be completely transparent.
I brought about a dozen of my paintings and collages because one of the instructors was curious about some of my art, and I stood crying over them while I had a significant conversation with someone I respect about what exactly it is I want to do. (For the purposes of this blog, I’ll be referring to him as Mr. Anderson.)
Mr. Anderson has been a steady part of the last half-dozen transformative years of my life, and one of his super powers is asking me questions that help me find a place in my own mind where things actually Make Sense. Not just where they Feel Good, or Feel Like They Make Sense, but where the definitions have been (to the best of my ability) actually sussed out, and I’m focused in on reality.
Writing about being focused on reality brought me back to the timer on my watch, and I got up to switch my laundry to some dryers. When I got back, there was a woman sitting at the table I’d been occupying. As the seat directly across from her was the only place open for me to put my laptop down on a surface in front of me instead of on my lap where I drop it constantly, I scrounged up the guts to ask if she minded that I take the spot. She looked up from her phone to smile when she said, “Oh sure!” I thanked her, and made a joke about myself being socially awkward, to which she smiled at me and replied in an accent I couldn’t place: “That’s okay! Me too… Besides, there’s not really anywhere else to sit.”
I like chatting with people in general, but I felt a little anxious being in a strange place, so I dug out my laptop, trying to signal that we didn’t have to get chummy on my account. She tried a couple times to talk to me, even though I had my laptop open; I’ll be honest that I don’t remember exactly what she said. Maybe something about washing blankets here instead of at her house? I nodded reflexively, trying to be polite without deliberately asking for more. It was gentle smalltalk on her part, of that I’m sure, just feeling out the waters of the woman sitting directly across from, ostensibly working.
Of course, she didn’t know I was just staring at the blinking cursor at the end of the introductory paragraphs of this blog post, thinking, ‘Fuck, where do I go from here? Uhh…’ She might’ve heard a few keystrokes as I typed something out, changed my mind, and pressed backspace a million times as is my custom instead of selecting a line and deleting it, and yet she gently persisted.
I’m glad that I followed my instincts to talk with her instead of dig out headphones and put them in so she wouldn’t try to converse with me anymore. (Which is something I’ve been told people do, but have never attempted myself. Wearing earbuds in public squicks me out, and I have a hard time ignoring people when they talk at me.)
She started by chatting about laundry, and then how her boyfriend didn’t want her to come do laundry by herself, but he lives about thirty minutes away and she convinced him she’d be fine. I mostly just practiced active listening, happy to interact with another human being now that I’d decided to focus but not especially interested in sharing anything about myself. She was quick to answer questions, and her eye contact never wavered — she seemed excited to have someone to talk to, and I’m a curious weirdo, so we were a match made in laundromat heaven.
Her name is Victoria. Last December, she went into the ER because she passed out in her doctor’s office: at that time, she weighed less than 95 pounds. She’d been telling her doctor that she had it all under control, and wanted to wait another two weeks before checking in somewhere. “I had a week off of work coming up and wanted to wait, so that way I wouldn’t miss any work, y’see?” She chatted with me about Melrose (a medical eating disorder recovery center), and how she’s on a contract there to continue CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and has been going for almost a year now. I asked if she’d be willing to share her current weight with me, and she beamed, perking up in her seat fast enough her ponytail bounced as she crowed: “125!” I offered a compliment of her work and a high five, and she wasn’t shy about getting a good, solid connection on it.
Interspersed through this conversation were stories and comments about her current boyfriend. “He doesn’t like me going there… He always tells me I look ‘fine’ and don’t need it anymore…” He also demands to know who she’s going out with, wants to hang out with her every moment of her free time, and freely admits he gets insecure when she spends social time with other males, even in public. “I go out to lunch with my coworker every day, and he’s a man, but I’m not going to do anything! It’s ridiculous, really…”
Up to this point, she kept eye contact with me while we were talking, her blue-green eyes clear and expressive even as she ended most of her sentences by trailing off. Unable to keep my mouth shut, as is often the case with me, I folded my laptop screen down and I asked her if she wanted my opinion. She seemed amused by the question, nodding hard enough that her hair was bouncing again as she said, “Oh, yeah, yeah!”
I told her if he truly cares about her well being, he’ll be supportive of her need for alone time, and her kickass journey in pursuit of said well being. I told her that while it was kinda neat that he admitted to being insecure, what actually matters is if he’s trying to address it or not — words are so, so much less important than actions.
She responded to this by sharing how he talks about his carbs all the time, and how he’s lost X amount of weight: “And I’ve tried to tell him I’m proud, yes, but it also makes me uncomfortable to talk about that kind of thing. I don’t want to. So I told him. And he doesn’t listen, he just keeps doing it.” She also told me that he gets upset when she goes out with her friends, and gave her a promise ring even though they’ve only been dating for a matter of weeks. “Oh! But it’s not this one!” She pointed to the pretty purple amethyst on her left ring finger: “I bought this for myself a few years ago… Don’t worry, I don’t wear that promise ring! It makes me… uncomfortable, y’know?”
I nodded along, telling her that her discomfort made sense and I would be weirded out too. I asked her if there were any other things that don’t sit right with her. She took a sip of her large gas station coffee, silenced an alert on her phone and finally answered, “Yeah… Y’know, that he doesn’t want me to see my friends, or change plans ever, and yells at me for not doing my laundry during the week so I can spend the weekend with him instead.” Her eyebrows furrowed, and she added: “One time, when we were at the Mall of America and my hair was a little shorter, I had it in a ponytail–” Here, she paused, face flushing a little bit and explaining to me why she wore a ponytail to the MOA; I just nodded and told her it made sense instead of launching off on a whole ‘you can look however you want, wherever you want, and fuck anyone who tells you otherwise as long as you’re aware of what you’re doing and what signals you’re sending.’
Thusly, she went on with her story, which is more important to me than my soap box any day. “–Anyway, he went ‘Oh, look at your little bitty ponytail!’ and pulled it. Pretty hard too! Not just a little tug. I got mad. I told him it wasn’t okay — that it was immature.” I asked if he’d done it again, and she squared her shoulders a little, assuring me that he hadn’t been doing that anymore, at least. “But it does feel sometimes like…” — I suspect she was searching for a word someone had said to her at some point in the past year — “…He’s trying to isolate me, make sure he knows what’s going on all the time. I don’t think I like it.”
I acknowledged that I don’t know her or her life aside from what she’d already told me, but I asked if there were good times in their relationship, too — if he was sweet, or kind, or ever apologized profusely for things. She nodded, eyes slipping away from mine for the first time as she also mumbled for the first time. I got the sense someone had already given her the typical, cookie cutter ‘abusers know how to keep you around’ spiel — the same one I’d heard multiple times in my own CBT sessions — and that maybe, like me, she wasn’t really impressed or convinced by a broken record player or copy-paste pamphlet.
So instead, I just told her that he probably doesn’t have a checklist, titled “How To Mistreat Victoria” with little bullets like: alienate from family, keep away from her friends, get attached abnormally fast, micromanage her time, disregard some requests for respect but not all, etc — but a pattern of behavior is still a pattern, and if it’s a pattern she doesn’t like and isn’t comfortable with, she doesn’t have to ‘put up with it’ for any reason.
She nodded, humming and laughing when I exaggerated my hand motions in an attempt to lighten the weight of such words coming from some rando in a laundromat. She also drew little plus signs on the cap of her water bottle, smiling again slightly as she started telling me stories about how her mother and father treat one another. “There’s so much love there — lots of communication, and when my mother goes up to her lady friend’s cabin for the weekend, my father goes and does his own thing, doesn’t bother her at all. They talk so much. I want that for my life, too.”
I told her there’s absolutely no reason she has to settle for any less than that. I also asked her with a bit of a cheeky nose wrinkle what her mother would say to her if she was the one sitting across from her in the laundromat instead of me, hearing all these stories. Victoria laughed, nodding and swirling her coffee cup between her two hands, amethyst nestled between two shiny, clear stones glittering under the harsh light.
I shared a little with her about my life then, how I went through many years of CBT, and my own relationship with food and movement. I talked about how often people can’t see — as in, ‘visually observe’ — where we are on our path, but that doesn’t make our progress any less valid or significant. I also told her she was doing great work for herself: going from damn near dead to rosy-cheeked and lugging her own laundry around in less than a year.
Aside from the high five, throughout the whole conversation, she’d kept brushing off my compliments of her work toward her own health. ‘My doctor pretty much made me stay and check in’ and ‘my therapist set up special appointments for me’ and ‘I have a contract with Melrose, so that keeps me on track.’
Finally, I leaned across the table a little bit and told her: “All of that stuff you told me about other people helping you may be true, but we all have choices — and you’re choosing to do the work. Your doc didn’t strap you to the bed, your therapist doesn’t live at your kitchen table and you could walk away from Melrose at any point. You’re the one doing the work, and I know it’s hard for us to let ourselves be proud, lady, I really do, but don’t let anyone take that away from you, or tell you what you’re doing isn’t important. I know I’m just a stranger at the laundromat, but even just from looking at you and what you’ve told me, I can see that you’re doing something right, so… Yeah. …Okay, I gotta go get my laundry out of the dryer now, excuse me.”
Once I dug all my clothes out and wrangled my two overfull hampers awkwardly back to the table, she’d gone to check her laundry too. I started getting my coat and shemagh back on, and when she returned to the table, I still hadn’t sussed out whether or not I would give her any contact information if she asked, or if I wanted to ask for hers. But then she bounced up, zipping her own coat, and said, “Thanks for letting me vent! That was awesome. I hope you have a good day!”
As is my custom, I told her ‘no worries!’ and asked if I could hug her. She laughed and nodded, walking toward me and opening her arms, so I gave her a huge hug and told her again I was proud, and that she was worth every bit of work she put into herself. She said ‘Thank you’ again — this time without any qualifiers, and I nodded my own goodbye before schlepping all my laundry and backpack out at once because I’m a stubborn asshole.
Can one conversation positively affect any of us in the long run? I believe so, yes. I’ve had multiple such conversations with VioDy instructors, Mr. Anderson and a couple close friends. There are specific snippets of appointments I remember from the eight years I spent with my best therapist, and there are random encounters like the ones with Victoria that help me clarify who and what I am, and how I can distill that down into who I want to be.
Will that conversation help Victoria? I have no idea. Whether it does or not is not mine to know about now because the moment has passed, she and I have gone on with our lives and whatever she chooses to do is completely on her.
As for me, that conversation, and sharing it with whoever’s reading this now, has elucidated at least the rough shape of what I want to do with myself, this blog, and my words: I want to share my thoughts on what I’ve learned, how it’s worked (or not!) for me, the results of some of my continued processes, and attempt to transfer whatever knowledge I can to anyone who can make use of it for themselves.
In the process of doing that, I’ll likely be sharing a lot about myself that I’ve never hesitated to share with close friends, but have never disclosed to the general public. Maybe I’ll even share some things that I haven’t shared with close friends. This makes me slightly uncomfortable, but I’m going to run with it anyway because I’m doing my best to be aware of what I’m doing and the signals I’m sending.
Of course I’d be a helluva lot more comfortable just slopping this into those people’s private inboxes than I would be posting it here in an open domain for anyone to stumble across randomly. But all the poets that have bolstered the parts of my soul spiderwebbed with doubt, and all of the instructors from VioDy that have opened my eyes to my own strength, and most of the sincere teachers that have helped me sort through my own processes have put themselves out there, at one point or another — by sharing their work and ideas, and committing time to material and communication.
So, I’m gonna give it a shot.
That said, maybe nothing I say will make a difference to anyone, aside from me for the act of having shared it. Maybe less than a dozen people will read this, and they’ll all be people I already know who’d be kind enough to read anything I write, whether it’s a half-coherent email about a dream I had or some strange experimental poetry.
And I’m okay with that.
Another thing I want to say at this moment is this: any coach, therapist, teacher, blog author, whatever — anyone who tries to act like they’re the one doing the Real Work when they’re offering you help or advice is an asshole, and anyone who pretends to have the Golden Answer is just another asshole with the added flavor of delusions.
I’m not offended if anything or everything I say strikes you as bullshit. I’m not a licensed therapist, or a medical professional, so don’t try to sue my ass — anyway, all I own is a cat and some books, and I’m pretty free about sharing both. I’m just a regular human who has been through some shit, seeks tools and understanding, and has seen some first-hand results.
For now, I’m just going to pretend we’re all in a random laundromat first thing on a Saturday morning, cartoons and tumbling clothes murmuring the background while we sit at the same table. Feel free to start a conversation, put your earbuds in and go about your day, or anything in between.
Intrepid Definitions 