I shoulda been paying attention!

I was so focused on “getting shit done”, I didn’t see the most important shit. My head may no longer be my permanent residence but… I’m obviously still paying the rent, still keeping a lot of stuff there. I even spend the occasional weekend in that heart-challenged space.

I oughta have known this was bound to happen. If I’d only just entered the date into my calendar the moment I knew about the schedule change, I woulda been on time. I have no idea what thoughts and/or feelings were distracting me from doing that one thing I coulda done. Back when I coulda done it.

That one thing. No idea. Back when…

Shoulda, outa, woulda, coulda.

Instead,

I’m waiting for my car at the dealership. There are several people in the waiting room and the TV in there is playing some game show and it’s oppressively loud. Even my earbuds can’t keep it out completely so I sit in the one seat left just outside the waiting room. There are two other people there and I’m on the end, next to a woman who looks to be in her mid sixties. Listening to a podcast of the BBC’s Hard Talk, I suddenly feel a tap on my shoulder. It’s the woman and she says (as I take out my buds) “Hi handsome”. I’m a bit more standoffish than usual for some reason but then she starts talking about how I look like Santa. An elderly man sitting to her left gets up to leave. I like it when people engage my inner Santa and it’s a fun place to be, especially when I’m somewhere not inherently fun.

Santa can be fun anyplace.

But then the woman starts in with comments I recognize as much more forward than that. I’m not sure which direction I’d like to go with what I can see will be my upcoming necessity to redirect this conversation when… the manager approaches and asks politely, why she’s there. The woman quickly tells the manager that she’s there to see him and suggests that they might be related somehow and how she was hoping… “You’d be able to help me out”. The manager asks the woman to come with him to his office and I go back to Zeinab Badawi grilling Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto about how “Hungary seems more and more at odds with the EU’s policy on migration”.

Quite some time later I’m now in the now less crowded waiting room after finding out my car will take a few minutes longer than expected. No matter… The TV is still on of course but it’s no longer as loud for some reason. I’m still listening to Szijjarto masticating the language of politics as a masterful Zeinab Badawi refuses to let him do so ad nauseam (why can’t US journalists do this?) The only other person in the room is the man from before. The one who left as soon as the woman had started talking to me. Soon, that same woman comes in, sits down and immediately starts talking to me again. The man again gets up and leaves the room.

The woman then begins to go into what I recognize from experience in “the mental health industry” (my term) as an escalation of what could very well be behavior linked to schizophrenia. I won’t go into details about her increasingly disjointed speech patterns and eventually ranting tone. It will suffice to say just that.

Just that. It was so.

I see it coming a mile away and instinctively present as neutral a posture as possible, while focusing all my energy on projecting love and compassion as I hold continuous eye contact with this woman. Her pain becomes terribly clear. As close to the surface as it could possibly be but yet, surprisingly still under some control. As she goes on and on, she no longer is pacing back and forth in the room and her tone becomes a bit less frantic as I double down on my projections of love and compassion. Love and compassion. Without speaking I ask this woman to please, please know that I care. Even though I can not help in the way she is asking for help.

I care. And I’m listening.

She then gets up, slowly. Preparing to leave but not quite ready to. She looks out into the dealership showroom and a look of fear and dread returns. Almost panicking again, she looks back to me. Pleading for the help I know I can not give. It kills me, but I know this. I do. She then turns suddenly and quickly moves through the showroom and out the door.

The elderly man immediately returns to the waiting room and we make eye contact. He looks relieved and seems about to go into talk of how uncomfortable it is to be around “crazy people”. I preemptively mention how sad I was for this woman who I think must have schizophrenia. A look comes over the man’s face and I see that he had not thought of this. He nods in agreement. We share a moment of compassion for all humanity and then chat a bit about something else. I mention how much I love my mother who, it turns out is very near this man’s age. He smiles, not sharing much but is fully present with me.

I get my car back and head to town and eventually to work… where I discover that I was supposed to come in early for a training update and thus am in deep do do with the boss.

Shit!

Shoulda, outa, woulda, coulda.

I become aware that, my self scolding here (shoulda, outa, woulda, coulda) is happily not even close to the kind of internal self thrashing, all too common in my, all too recent past, less aware self.

Yikes!

What’s next?

Blessed.

m(__)m