Institutions vs. Institutionalized Strengthiness

I got a new job, which I am very excited about. It is as Job Coach for people with disabilities, for a great, passionate, very cool organization, whose values mesh up with mine very well. I had applied for a similar position with a different organization previously - and, I don't know, something, or, truly, a few somethings just weren't right as I went through parts of the interview process. And neither my passion nor my political or intellectual position on issues related to the job mattered at that place: it was to be a Job and nothing more. After having worked in many, many restaurants and seen the kind of ardor, dedication, and self-sacrifice routinely demanded of even those on the lowest rungs of the kitchen ladder, it was quite disturbing to find that, in a position where human psyches and human hearts would be affected as much by my approach as by my execution of the position, neither actually mattered. I still knew that I would rock at the job and be a great asset for the individuals I would support if hired, so I waited to see if I was called to the final level of interviews. But I wasn't, and I felt it was all to the best.

So now, I am excited. I met one woman I'm going to work with, T. She lived, for thirty years, in one of those horrific institutions we imagine don't exist anymore, only recently having been placed into community living. She was so great at her job in the institution's sheltered workshop that she earned about four times what she was 'supposed to' every month. Now, she has her own home that she decorated in her own style, a social life, hobbies and interests she can pursue, assistants who help her out with things she can't do for herself, and she is soon to get a job at a department store, where I will liaise between her and the company, and work to help her understand her responsibilities and succeed at her position.

The day I met her, my new boss and one of T.'s supported-living assistants were with us as we walked around the mall, but a major point of the trip was to see if T. and I would be a good match, so I hung back by her and tried to let her and her curiosity about the new person lead the interaction. After soliciting compliments on her new shoes, T.'s first real question to me was what I thought a person should do when someone is harassing or being mean to him or her. I asked her what she thought someone should do, and she said she would just ignore them, that some people just do mean things and you have to accept that and try not to let it bother you.

Alright, it's a simple truth. Fine. Ignore mean people and your day goes smoother. But being harassed or made fun of in the way T. meant it, in the way she has experienced much of her life, simply because she looks and acts as she does, is not something most of us have to contend with. Nor are our experiences with it so much a part of how we view the world, and our place within it, that we would want to bring it up with someone we had just met. It's not pressing for us. Being rejected in some fashion multiple times a day is simply not a risk most of us face.

But then, neither is that sort of open, heartfelt communication something most of us are willing to risk. Many of our disabilities are such that they keep us bound up inside our own perspectives, our own minds, in a functional isolation paralleling T.'s decades-long real isolation, but in our case masked by an abundance of superficial relations. We can't bear the risk of being truly ourselves and truly vulnerable with others, so we frequently fail to achieve true communion with them. We refuse, even after much time with a person, to lay our fears and weaknesses bare to even a fraction of the extent to which T. was willing to do unreservedly from the very start. We close those parts of ourselves off - the weak and the small and the yearning and the sad parts - that people with obvious disabilities are more often unable to hide. We are just as weak, and just as dependent on other people and community, as 'they' are, but out of our own fears of rejection we steadfastly refuse to present that side of ourselves to others.

Featured Guest: Todd

Long time no post.

Sorry about that, dears. After that last rather apocalyptic bit about the death of good buys as we know them, I've been as busy as I have been verklempt. And I'm not saying I have anything to say, nor certainly that I have any answers as to how anyone not in the $450,000-house bracket is supposed to put food on his or her family's Ikea table while still managing to put gas in the Subaru and rent in the landlord's box on time. It's as bad as, and worse than, I intimated.

On the other hand, I've been sad that I haven't found anything to post about. I recently dug someone up from college, which is always great (at least it's always been so for me), but just today someone dug me up, which is even greater as, as you know, I so dislike having to embody the yang any more than I have to. For heaven's sake, I go to a full-service gas station! (Inside information: they don't charge me, either, because I buy all my Diet Cokes and Tums and '5' Flare-flavor gum there!)

So now I feel obliged. And if there is ever anything that motivates me, it is the ponderous weight of responsibility to others. There may be a great number of words in this blog, but there really aren't that many posts. Anyone finding it amusing will quickly realize he or she has come to the end (which is to say the beginning). So, with living proof that someone, somewhere (and better still, someone I know) (well, in a sense, and not the Biblical one) is reading this, I have renewed inspiration - and duty! - to offer to him and to you more jeremiads on the Death of Decorum, the Horror of Calvinism, the Psychic Pain of 'Comfort Clothes,' and, in the words of the current Pope, Benedict XVI, the 'Tyranny of Relativism.'

In the meantime, while you are walking around in your terrifying comfort clothes being relative and not opening doors for ladies, go over to 43Things and think about what you really want to do. I hope one of them turns out to be 'pay for a year of Comcast Internet-and-phone-service for the Greenwood Food Bank' -- because she has one line for her phone, fax, and DIAL-UP!!! Not to mention that her clientele, like that of most other food banks in the area, has risen 30% in just the past couple months.

And while we're on the topic of problems around town, I can't find the figures for this, but: housing prices for King County (Seattle's county) rose last year, while those of counties to the north and south, Snohomish and Pierce, fell. Recalling that gas prices are as prohibitive as they currently are regarding long commutes, it's not an entirely rosy picture for individuals contemplating buying a home in the cheaper suburbs. And, again, if you have money to buy a house in Seattle proper, you'll cut down on your commute but pay a great deal more for your mortgage -- although houses in city should continue to rise in value. Maybe.

However, what of the poor schmucks who bought a house in those same sad suburbs (perhaps enticed by loose lending practices, 5-year ARMS, or 100% funding) two or three or five years ago? Even many of those who did put down cash, and did have enough income to make payments are back down to zero equity on their $300,000 house, which would be a $400,000 house in Seattle, and was a $325 or $350,000 house a few years back.

Grrrr.

Well, that wasn't entertaining in the slightest. I do enjoy making global crises out of shed cat hair and ill-considered lipstick shades, but sometimes the weight of reality is such that it defeats the point of deliberately manufacturing problems when there are so many genuine ones to get sick over.