Today I became eligible to apply for my license as a mental health counselor.
I've been thinking about this day since I was hired at my job, and have had the date circled in my planner for the whole year. Actually, I've been thinking about this day since I started daydreaming about going back to school eight years ago. I've worked hard for this day.
Today I had to apologize to a client and begin working on healing our relationship. I had to say goodbye to one of my art therapy clients because she met all her goals and it was time to move on. Another about her experience in the hospital, another about his children. Another about losing her children. My heart hurt several times today.
Whenever I stopped to think, I felt so overwhelmed. But I wanted to finish the application for my license TODAY.
To send in the application, I needed a pile of information: recommendations from my current supervisors, transcripts, forms from former supervisors, application form, a photo, a check. So today, I walked up to the post office and got a very expensive 2X2 photo taken, chatted with the postal worker about the after hours goings on at the post office, and walked back towards work.
The day was a gorgeous stunning blue, and I decided that I wanted to take a photo of the train tracks that run past my work. Every day the commuter rail rattles my windows and reverberates in my ears; the little kids always stand on the chairs and yell "Thomas!" It felt fitting to mark the day with this.
So I took a quick photo and felt oddly embarrassed like I was doing something wrong. I thought about the fancy camera I want to buy to celebrate my huge milestone, and how I needed to stop being so embarrassed and just take photos. And I then heard, "Excuse me! What are you taking photos of?"
I was always the good kid in school, and already felt weird for taking a photo of the train tracks. I started waving my camera in the air and said "you can look! its just a picture! I just like to take pictures!"
It turned out that this was a male meter maid, checking the cars and moonlighting as a vigilante, self-appointed to maintain our transportation safety. He told me a whole story about how the police swarmed the train station just last week because some kids were filming the train tracks and I better be careful but fortunately I don't look much like a terrorist and be more careful next time. I told him how I felt uncomfortable and wasn't sure, and then I wondered, why can't I take a photo of what I want to take a photo of?
And I also thought about the drug deals that go down around these tracks completed by the suburban youth, the many terrible things I know that happen in this neighborhood behind closed doors, and how I'm not actually worried about taking a photo of the train tracks. And how I wish people weren't self-appointed vigilantes but I also wish people would speak up when they see something wrong happen.
Later, I see a ton of police cars outside my work and a client tells me that a telephone pole fell over almost hitting some cars.
And I absurdly thought to myself, I am in the right place. It is undeniably ridiculous and painful and filled with a big heaping dose of humility. I am often uncomfortable and unsure, and afraid of doing what I know I have a right to do. I am going somewhere, but I don't know where. But I am here now, and heading in the right direction. Now if I could just dig myself out of this pile of paperwork, I would feel really great.
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