Cafe Hitch-hike

2022-07-22

The best-kept secret in plain sight

I was a bit spent at the end of this workweek. My friend was supposed to be in from out of town, but had to cancel because a relative got into an accident. Well, we’ll catch up by video chat tomorrow so we can get caught up, but of course it’s an ok substitute for spending time, laughing, and enjoying some herb. Maybe I was supposed to have this cancellation.

My June travel plan canceled and my plans to redo my kitchen met a similar fate. As it turned out, the 9 year old vehicle of mine needed some repairs, so the money I didn’t spend turned out to be spent on car repairs. I can’t complain, it’s been a super-solid car and the mechanics said I have been doing extremely well with that rice burner.

I didn’t realize how much I was in the doldrums until I started feeling better recently. The sunny times seem to last a little longer and be more frequent. I finished my will, check. I got more upgrades on other areas of my little place known as the Patio Lounge, check. I’m meeting people bit by bit and I’m not terrified, check. If anything, I kinda like talking to and meeting these people. But, I still need this space. I don’t feel terrible for my friend having to cancel. I looked forward to something quiet.

Work-sweet-work. I’m on a big project that has lot of hoops to jump through, and sometimes it feels like little more than a popularity contest when it comes down to a final decision. We have to give some feedback to some people and I’ve held my tongue. I’m realizing how many people in the building really can’t let shit go. If I gave someone the wrong look back in 2011, it’s likely they’ll remember and hold it against me forever. It was easy to imagine this person cutting me at the most inopportune time because of it. I’m glad others who this person won’t attack had the same thoughts and said it instead.

I’m getting a good track record with reading colleagues. I had to hold a meeting because one had some gripes and I actually had a sense of where they were coming from. Yep, I called that one quite accurately and the meeting was quickly over because they were satisfied with the discussion. I’ll be silent with this skill, no one needs to know I have it.

I did attend a meeting this week with someone who sells us stuff, and I had some interesting questions that had even my colleagues nodding like, hmm, good point. I had never met this salesperson before and said at the end they were glad to meet me and liked talking to us. One of the colleagues said, “that’s our Hitch-hike, our secret weapon.”.

Secret. Yep. I’m the best-kept secret that walks through everything and in plain sight. I don’t really know about ‘weapon’ unless you count the people I pissed off, but I’m fine with ‘secret.’

I saw my mentor again after not seeing him for almost a month in June. It will be every 2 weeks. I think I’m learning to stand more on my own 2 feet and had to get used to the initial shock from separation. It needed to happen.

My mentor told me he had some issues with one of the decisions I had made, and he was quite concerned. I guess he was so concerned he preferred to terminate. I’d rather not say what that was, but he was glad I made a different one (which I did in the time I didn’t see him). I had no idea he felt that way. My decision really was none of his business, yet something that he thought would affect my mental health in the long run.

He wasn’t the only person who felt that way about a certain decision. He and another person close to me asked me about it in the spring using near-identical expressions and words, and these 2 don’t even speak or know each other.

I’m starting to see I wasn’t anxious and depressed because of a brain defect. Being the oddball in the family and in most places often does that. I love the region where I live because I’m not a weirdo here, I fit in quite swimmingly and it makes me laugh. I’m realizing I don’t and never will speak the same language as most of my family, but they do care. They just have no idea where to begin. I also guess we are on different levels.

I’m also seeing a different type of distancing, like I feel less obligations towards them. It feels great, to be honest. I know my mother is going through some tough times now and she hasn’t been in touch much at all. I’m ok with that because I can’t rescue her. A part of me thinks of the many binds I had growing up and as an adult, and Mom always made it clear to me my life and certain things were my responsibility after a certain point. I pretty much said the same thing to her this past winter. It really neutralized some of the bitterness I felt for getting so much thrown on me so early in life. In a way, it was me saying, ‘taste some of your own medicine,’ but the bigger part was… it really was a fact of life in the larger scheme of things.

I also see that my family realizes how sensitive I am. I’ve always known they hid things from me, but now I see why. I think I’m starting to accept that more. There’s some things I really don’t need to know.

Anyhow, I’m going to fold myself into a book. I watched the BBC series Call the Midwife and finally got the trilogy of memoirs. It was so timely with reminding us how much medical care, as we know it, is a very recent thing…

…Women had up to a 40% change of dying in childbirth, the lack of birth control really affected families on so many levels, and even more frightening was many of the social issues we think are so new really are not at all. Jennifer Worth writes about child trafficking that took place (yeah, almost identical to Epstein, feeding the demand of wealthy clientele).

Activists really had to fight long and hard for changes like health care regulations, child labor issues, and more, and it really wasn’t longer than 100 years ago. It reminds me of how human life had much less value in previous years, especially for the poor and marginalized.

When I think of this and where this country is heading, I feel a frightened stillness. We are regressing, and before we know it, we’ll value others as lowly as we did back then (many places never really changed). It really makes me wonder what it really means to be human and what we’ve done to ourselves and our homes.

But, the book is a beautiful story that needed to be told.

downwind | upstream