Circles

It’s almost April and I’m coming into nearly a full circle. It’s been almost 15 years since the life-changing car wreck – it will be fifteen years on April 23, and I am beginning Round Two of a "Community-based Work Assessment" at William Temple House Thrift Shop just a few blocks away from the last hospital I was treated in in 1998.

I don’t drink now, so that’s different, and I’m on anti-depressants, which help me stay even, and I’m not feeling so pissed off, even though I’m down to my last $20 or so. Without the meds, I’d feel very worried about myself (and I AM, it’s just very distant). The car is almost out of gas, so it’s staying home and I’m taking the bus to and from my 2 and a half hour work assessment. It’s four days a week for two weeks, acting as a "donation attendant" at a thrift shop, with a "job coach" by my side – much more organised than that first job assessment at Target department store in December, which did not work out.

It wasn’t MY fault it didn’t work out the first time, I don’t think, but rather that it wasn’t organised at all and Target had little for me to really do. There was no "job coach" then, the outfit running that fiasco was from Salem and didn’t know Portland at all, and the head guy of that outfit had and died from leukemia – I don’t think his head was in the game.

I have an "Honored Citizen" bus pass – a legitimate discount card for a dollar a ride, and two books of bus tickets to go back and forth, from VocRehab. The bus company here, Tri-Met, has a "trip-finder" website, which I looked up last night and printed out the directions for the trip on, and have a few hours before I go for my first "day" – 2 and a half hours in place near where I came out of the coma and back into the world.

It will be good, I guess, to get out of the apartment (although I love my home) and away from this computer. Things look different when I travel by bus – I don’t have to worry about where I’m going or traffic or anything else but getting on and off the buses at the right places at the right times. (that’s enough on my mind, thank you)

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The story I posted last was one that I wrote specifically to get into a creative writing class at PSU when I was in college. It did not get me into the class; I had a friend get in and was glad I didn’t go – it was all women’s rights and abortion and how fucked men are, and although my story depicted a strong woman who got out of a bad relationship – she was the survivalist in the story, you know, the teacher said it was "too television-like", too "episodic" and I didn’t get admitted to the class.

I think it’s one of my very best stories, written in one sitting and in as few words as needed to tell that story. I think it’s quite powerful and a good story, one that makes you think and makes you want more from it, and is, dare I say, rather Hemingway-esque in its sparse words and powerful thoughts.

Of course, I may be wrong, but probably not; it is a good story.

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Anyway, onwards. Today I begin something new. My "job coach" and the head of this organisation are women, and I always do better with women than I do with men, after this brain injury thing. Almost always better, anyway, and I don’t feel a need to apologize about that. I’m almost all the way down to where I began in 1999, when I got out of the hospitals and the Foster Home – broke, and starting over and only slightly less confused than I was then.

Onwards.

 

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