Cause I am my enemy
The water's up to the knee
I never wanted anything from you
Yes I do, yes I do
My engine's running on dry
My head's so fucked up inside
Joel is a riot.
For all his importance that I tease him about, for all our issues in becoming...er...acquaintances, since we're still a few steps away from the friendship stage, he's a nice guy. He and Jacob have been friends forever and I respect that immensely.
My issues with him lie with his immediate heavy-handed approach in wanting to micromanage every aspect of my life when we approached him to help. My subsequent rebellion and amusing accusations did little to enhance his image of me but in vindication I have since heard that several clients jumped ship once he completed adopting Claus' practice because of his radically different approach. Claus has retired, of course. Joel has many irons in his professional fires, the least of which concerns therapy (thank god) because frankly...
He sucks at it, I think. And I should know. I have fired nine people now, in two years.
Okay, so maybe I'm not the best one to ask. But there are far too many counselors out there who are not as objective as they appear to be, and at risk for either getting sucked into you on a personal level, unable to maintain any distance, or they are so rigid they keep trying to shove you into a category and fail to notice you are a human being and when you don't comply they give up.
I seem to always get one or another, which is dumb. Which is why I wind up getting counseling on the fly from Jacob who does a magnificent job at being neither objective nor forgiving and well, it works about as well as you'd expect it to. But Jacob is still awesome despite having no business counseling his own wife.
In any event, I didn't sit down to talk about therapy (which sucks, did I mention that?), I wanted to talk about other things.
This morning was a barely concealed arrangement between Jacob and Joel that Joel would run with me today, since Jacob had early meetings (didn't I say the church would eat him alive again? He loves it, I swear) and is freaking busy all the time again, already (part-time, Sam, part-time. I think that means nothing.) so Joel said it was fine if we ran and didn't talk and so I brought my zen and he brought his iPod and we ran and ran and traded players every now and then (who the HELL listens to Sigur Ros when they run? Joel, that's who.) and we went down to the river and I held my breath until we rounded the corner and the bench was...upright. Not disturbed for the first time in eight days. Which is good. Maybe it was a fluke. Joel was pre-warned (thanks to Jake) and yet he said nothing and we kept going.
And then my headphones died an abrupt death. So Joel put away his iPod and we ran and talked, only we didn't talk about Bridget, we talked about Joel and it was nice to hear about someone normal without many issues and without a world of hurt and baggage dictating his every move. He survived a messy divorce quite admirably and is vaguely lonely but has some friends here and counts us among them, I think he meant Jake more than me but I'm sure he'll correct me after reading this. I hope we do become friends eventually but we had a very rough start. Hell, the day I met him was...a painful day and I'm colored by that forever. I come with a neon sign over my head that blinks constantly and flickers and gives people headaches and it says "insane" I think. I can't see it but trust me, it's there. How do you become trusting friends with someone who you first met as they held you down while you screamed in order to give you a sedative?
I didn't think so. God, what a horrible memory.
After my shower I dug out my old nomad player and stole the headphones from it. Of course they still work. Figures.
I invited Joel for Thanksgiving. I wonder if he'll come.
