Customer Service Voices

 As most know my current role involves clinical quality assurance. Essentially I listen to crisis calls and provide feedback, education, support to other counselors.

I also have had humans in my own world be frustrated with me when I use my “customer service voice.”

I can tell you with 100% certainty that a counselor, or myself, are never ever using that voice or tone out of anger, spite, frustration, or anything negative. 

I can also tell you with 100% certainty that when I hear this tone I know this person feels overwhelmed, exhausted, scared, unsure, lost. They are fighting through heartache, exhaustion, and tears to show up anyway. They want to be kind when the world is not kind to them. They want to be a place of rest when home and peace are lost in that moment to them.

They are trying. The alternative is allowing those awful feelings and moments to take over, to be sharp, unkind, unloving. And so they take a deep breath and say hello and pray the next syllable hides their brokenness.

Nothing is Black and White

   Nothing is black and white.

Everything is a concept and in context.

I can love you and grieve who you should have been.

I can attend therapy over what you did and ache for what you could have done.

I can know who you were and be in hysterics over who you could have been.

I loved and hated you.

I avoided you at all costs and hoped someday my Pappy would come.

Please come.

But you didn't.

I watched you love others.

I know you were capable.

I know I was never enough to see that man.

You died with me settled on Easter after hot dogs, on ignored collect calls, on ketchup packets that should have not happened,

on do not engage in those activities, and what the fuck Is wrong with you.

You left and I’m broken, and grateful .

You cant hurt anyone anymore.

But am grieving because you also will never come home.

Nell Ditt

Pieces

 Over and over again in my world I have found myself in pieces.

Fault is irrelevant when the pieces cut me.

And I’m a master craftsman. I can take the ugliest and smallest of pieces and make them beautiful, or at least I could. 

Compliments and Confusion

 Something happened this evening and I’ve struggled a bit whether to mention or not, but here we are.

I am one, someone with major social anxiety, and two, who absolutely hates the ambivalence and cruelty that has become so normal. 

My absolute preference is to avoid humans, but I know that isn’t healthy, or helpful, and so I have made a rule of sorts for myself that when I do go out I will find one person to say hello, something positive, something encouraging to. 

It is absolutely not easy. But I’ve done it and met some beautiful humans who end up sharing some of their story and I leave grateful I was brave. Grateful that this one day I saw and felt seen.

Today, I’m in a local store it was crazy crowded and my anxiety awful, but I reminded myself I needed to find someone. And so I did. A lovely older lady who had this shirt on that just made her complexion glow. She seemed distracted, stressed, and so I stopped and said, I love that sweater, it looks beautiful on you.

(It’s super hard to give specific compliments to strangers, so I typically stick with I love those shoes, that shirt, great job mama, whatever).

She kinda snickered and talked with the person with her about it being weird.

At first, I kinda spiraled, but then I thought how right she was. Yes, kindness, acknowledgment, communication are weird. It’s weird but doesnt mean it should be. 

And so my hope for this person is that today, and every day after, she is surrounded by people who see her, who encourage her, who don’t let her forget that in the midst of so much darkness, goodness exists.

Fathers Day

May your words and actions as a father define and consume you today and everyday. May every failure to love and protect be amplified when you need love and protection. May your every moment be filled with the terror you instilled or ignored. May the chaos you caused drown you. 

I rest knowing my children will be better.

It’s Not Glitter

No one warns you about how dried blood flakes and glistens like glitter that you just can’t seem to get off. 

No one tells you how it all smells like metal or makes your stomach turn. 

No one tells you the loudness of gunshots make your ears bleed.

No one tells you bullets burn the skin 

No one tells you how fingers and hands sliding over the surface of a car paint desperation and fear that refuse to be ignored because it eats the enamel.

No one tells you. 

I may never tell anyone either because it hurts my heart so much to say out loud. 

Hope and Other Things I Struggle With

This weekend my son took our 70 lb dog, Chief, kayaking. I need to break that down because I'm not sure anyone will get the magnitude otherwise. On September 24, 2023 I thought I had lost my son. I spent hours thinking he was dead and no one would tell me. Even after finding out I had not completely lost him, his future was so uncertain. Maybe he would live, maybe his hand might work, maybe his heart and mind would recover from the awfulness. The tubes and blood and procedures are so intricately and overwhelmingly etched in my brain that I struggle constantly to breathe. 

On Wednesday this week my therapist asked about him and if he was home. I said, "No, he's at work, actually, I'm not sure because he called me randomly earlier and asked about a Kayak. Knowing my son he is probably somewhere procuring one. haha!" Not an hour later I go into Walmart and hear a loud scraping noise. I look up and see my son across the store. He was in public, in a crowded place, walking with a big smile and so calmly towards me. I've watched him in pain, I've grieved heavily watching him heal, I've watched him be absolutely terrified for months, but that day, he was focused on the kayak and fishing and all the last few months of awfulness didn't matter. I'm scared all the time too, that the son I knew would never come back, but I saw him that day, and in that moment my soul smiled.