Samaritans

Phone call to the Samaritans.

-Well, we’ve had a good long chat about your feelings.
-Are you saying you need to get on? She won’t answer that straight out. Instead, she says, carefully,

-We’re always available if you need to call us. So I said,

-I ask you a question, and you will not give me an answer. You lead me to understand that you wish to end the conversation, though I do not want that. I feel manipulated. Though I also feel quite pleased that I can state my feeling, rather than just be disappointed and acquiesce. That is new for me. Do you want to end the phone call?

(pause)
-Thank you for calling
(pause)
-Goodbye
(pause)
Click

It was only 27 minutes. What I wanted is a listening ear. I know all the fucking wisdom-bollocks.

Live in the moment.

Accept what is.

I know my objections are ridiculous, but they remain my objections. Just before the call ended, I told her that I was seeing a psychotherapist on Friday, and one of my reasons for calling was to find a corner of the Gordian knot at which picking might be behovely. (Then thought that expressing that in that way was to make it beautiful for me, rather than necessarily communicative. Then thought that I am judging her as less cultured and intelligent than me.)

-Can’t you just let the session take its course?
-Oh yes! Absolutely! It will be what it will be! But I thought that stirring the pot beforehand might bring things to consciousness which might not otherwise come.

Those adverts, a guy looking really rough, unlike normal advertising picturing people the target audience aspire to be, and the caption A Samaritan helped me take control of my life. Perhaps she wants to Give Advice. Well, perhaps she will say something helpful, and perhaps I will make all the connections and she is just a listening ear. That’s good too.

Emotional turmoil. Friday, wonderful time with amazing person. Saturday, email- delight! She feels it too! Sunday tantalised, Monday immiserated- When will I see her again, if getting to one afternoon in a coffee shop takes two months! That email had warm promise, and also a list of other things she really has to do which get in the way of meeting, just like the other things which led to cancelling our last two arranged meetings and delaying the first arrangement for seven weeks. It does not help that she is more intelligent than I, as well as out of my league by every other possible measure.

A job interview!

And, having discovered and accepted my Rightness- my femininity, expressiveness, playful childlike nature, will-power, beauty,

I am left with my Wrongness, how I sit around watching TV or scrolling facebook, choleric at the shared articles, not tidying the advertising leaflets- at least not chip wrappers or dogshit, it’s not as bad as the worst home visit story I have heard- lying on my floor for the last week. I don’t see how it would improve things, or something,

and the question of What to DO????

Note the sexism of the posters. Picture of man- “A Samaritan helped me take control of my life”. Woman- “For once, I could be myself”. And I couldn’t.

1000 speak is up again.