It was only about eight in the morning, and yet it was already stiflingly hot. I’d been living in a strange land, the desert essentially, for almost a year and still had not made friends with that dry, oppressive heat. I don’t think I ever would have, and I’m glad I didn’t hang around to find out.
I’d been up all night on an extreme adrenalin dump, and while my body was exhausted my mind was still reeling. The event that brought me to this place (well really, I brought me to this place) had been a climax of circumstances that I won’t go into here, but will someday.
That story has many, many layers to it. And this particular layer is one that comes to the surface for me more often than not for some reason. So, while I’m not ready to tell the whole thing yet, I’ll take the proverbial pen to paper and see what comes about.
Back to being a stranger in a strange land.
My mind had been in such intense overdrive for so many hours (and months, really), that I found myself having to ground myself in where I was in the immediate moment to grasp at some sense of reality and safety. I found myself sitting in a small office, inside what clinical institutions work so hard to maintain as a “normal” home setting. I looked around at the walls for the first time and saw all the familiar state-mandated posters and certificates regarding health practices and other such required topics to be posted by law.
And, of course, there was the familiar vibe of crafty endeavors and crocheted wall hangings to further promote the feeling of hominess and normalcy.
I don’t mean to imply that there was any falsehood here. The thing is that I’d spent many, many hours of my professional life as a licensed therapist in offices just like this one. I know it’s a careful and thoughtful endeavor to make these settings feel as comforting and non-institutional as possible.
But none of that really settled on me until later. My reaction in the moment was more… visceral. Primitive. And it didn’t come to me until I allowed my gaze to fall on the young woman, probably about ten years my junior, sitting on the other side of that same damn desk. The metal one with the thick plastic top disguised as wood grain that typically graces the front of classrooms and high school counselors’ offices.
She was organizing some paperwork and explaining some necessary details to me, and in all my exhaustion and being mired in the absolute surreality of my circumstances, it hit me.
“Holy shit, I’m on the other side of the desk.”
Given the very intense and frightening nature of the events that had brought me to that point in time, this revelation was not the first wave of the gravity of my situation. But, it was one of the biggest, and the pull of its undertide into a completely new reality was both terrifying and, somewhere very dimly within me, welcome.
To be clear, I hadn’t done anything wrong to end up where I was. I hadn’t broken the law and was not in some kind of mental health setting. I had fled there by choice. Sort of. Really, there wasn’t much choice in the matter at all. It was a shelter in every sense of the word, and I desperately needed it at the time. I try not to assign blame to this time in my life, but I do think a healthy dose of accountability for the choices that got me there is appropriate. “How I got to yes” in the words of a supportive friend with who I would later process these events.
As it turned out, I would only stay in that place for a couple of days, and then would be on my way to climb my way out and into the light of an incredible, new story. I certainly don’t mean to oversimplify that, by the way. It’s been one hell of a ride, and the destination is and continues to prove nothing less than divinely providential. It’s been by far the most intense and rewarding endurance event I’ve ever participated in.
Back to that desk.
Part of my “institutional conditioning” from having worked on the other side of the desk for 14 years was that surely I would only be able to stay for a limited amount of time, maybe a few days to a week, and then be ushered back out into the world as quickly as I was able to be.
What I found, however, was quite the opposite. While I was eager to move on and face whatever this new chapter was going to bring (and it was very, very unclear at that time), I was surprised to learn that I would be able to stay as long as I possibly needed. There were, of course, requirements for remaining there that were completely reasonable and designed to promote the health of anyone needing to stay there.
What I learned, though, was that there were women who had been living there with their children for months. Hearing this was a mixture of relief that there was one less thing on my list to keep me up at night, and of the heartbreaking truth that this was the reality for so many women. And, I think, it was also an abrupt and necessary reminder that I could, and would, walk my way out of this one humble step at a time.
I’ve challenged myself around the thought that perhaps I was carrying any kind of arrogance or “that will never happen to me-ness” around that needed to be taken down a notch or ten. And honestly, I don’t feel that there was. I spent a long time on the other side of the desk, helping frightened kids with absolutely no sense of control over their circumstances feel safe in that very moment, that “intake” time to use a gross clinical term.
I remember those moments and kids as if I were just with them. And, almost ten years after having left that profession, I still do hear from some of them. I’m confident that, just like the staff members in that shelter who weren’t showing up every day for the glamor by any means, I put my heart and care into that work.
But, what I was carrying was a lack of acknowledgment that my choices would have a cumulative effect. And they all came in a flight of fury into that moment in time, sitting on the other side of that desk, sweating, scared, holding my six-month-old baby with no idea what the coming days, months, or years would look like.
I’m so grateful for that damn desk.