Take This Job And..., 13

I have worked as a mental health peer support worker for the past eleven years or since 2004.  I had recently been fired from the homeless shelter where I was working for the previous year and seeking new employment, hoping my savings would hold out before my first paycheque.  I had been off welfare for a year and a half and was determined to stay off it.  While doing research about prospective new workplaces I came across a listing for peer support work.  I seemed to have all the qualifications: years of support and care experience in the community and a mental health diagnosis as well as my experience of a stable recovery.

The interview held my first great disappointment.  The wage was going to be ten dollars an hour, two more than the then eight dollar minimum wage.  I would be allowed to work a contract of twenty hours a month with a mental health team.  This was hardly the fulltime or livable work I was looking for.  When I mentioned my hesitation the program co-ordinator, who was part of the interview panel, tried to encourage me to stick with it, given that I would be allowed to work as many contracts as I wanted.  I was sold and accepted for training.

Following an intense six weeks of training I did a practicum with an organization that decided to keep me.  I still work at this site.  I applied and was interviewed for other positions and was turned down.  I had not expected such a competitive field for finding simple underpaid work.  I was eventually hired for an organization in Richmond where the pay was a bit better.  The director of this site was also frustratingly argumentative, opinionated and pig-headed.  It was a nervous connection and I resigned six years later.  In the meantime I was hired in other sites through the back door.  I would be recommended as a candidate, they would try me out and convinced of my skills and ability would hire and keep me.  I have almost never secured employment in this field through a competitive  interview.  It has always or almost always occurred through connections and reputation.

Despite the low pay I loved my new job and held out in hope about eventually moving on to a better paid, more prestigious position in the mental health field.  No such luck.  The reality never lives up to the propaganda.  I was still pumped on the whole recovery philosophy of our work and quickly gained a reputation as a very talented and able worker.

A year or two after I was hired we were given a raise to eleven dollars an hour.  Two or three years after it was raised to twelve dollars an hour where it has remained frozen for the past six years.  I have already mentioned that I was nearly fired after telling someone in upper management that prolonged low wages and underemployment entrench marginalization and stigma.

The honeymoon was over.

The honeymoon is still over.  I still love my work, the interaction with clients and the pleasure of working with awesome people.  The obstacles to advancement, low pay and other disadvantages have taken their toll.

I could have done much worse.  I could still be on welfare.  Or homeless.  Or stuck in meaningless work.  My outcome has been so much better.  In five years I can retire but I still might continue working part time. And yes there is a God.  And I have a job.

Take This Job And..., 12

Here are some of my favourite features about my day job.  For now I will fake amnesia and forget about the chronic low pay and oppressive and idiotic upper management and administration.  I will forget about the near absence of opportunities for moving forward and the unlikelihood of a raise before I retire in five years.  I will also forget about the built in stigma in this job and the experience of being cynically exploited as a role model of recovery for our clients.  I will also blithely forget about the social marginalization and the many small acts of exclusion that occur for peer support workers by much better paid psychiatrists, case managers, rehab therapists and others.  And last but not least I will not worry my sweet little head about the absence of benefits from my job, a particularly cruel irony given that as the lowest paid workers, if you are not on a disability pension and your job is your only source of income (my case), you are going to have to pay for all your dental care, etc. from out of your own pocket and resources.

Today is a splendid example of what I like about my job.  I had a brief visit with my client this morning, since he had another professional appointment a half hour later, making it necessary for us to finish early.  I had no other work today, save for one afternoon cancellation for which I am already getting paid.  I could spend the remainder of the day doing whatever I wanted.  And I did.

I enjoyed a long walk of some five miles or so in the hot summer sun, but with a lot of shade along the way.  I walked through a couple of wealthy neighbourhoods, surrounded by palatial homes, towering shade trees and gardens.  For four glorious miles.  I ended up in one of my favourite coffee shops, which is my usual Saturday retreat.  I chatted with the friendly owner then sat in a comfy chair in the corner where I rehydrated myself with iced coffee and very cold water while drawing and colouring in my sketchbook.  A lady asked if she could share my table since her back was needing a comfy chair.  We had a pleasant conversation and she also took interest in my art.

Almost two hours later I left.  I was too tired from mild heat stress to go on to hike in the woods. I got on the bus, did my grocery shopping and went home where I rested briefly, then went to a café in my neighbourhood, also with a comfy corner, for more iced coffee and art.  This same café is also showing some of my paintings.  If you happen to live in the Vancouver area it is called "BC's Best Coffee", Drake St. and Howe, by the Howe Street entrance onto the Granville Street Bridge.  I also had pleasant brief conversations with the owner's daughter and a customer before returning home to do paperwork and have dinner.  It's a great café and as I told the owner's daughter, they have a gift for making downtown feel like a small town.

This all seems very twee, of course and it's never as lovely and idyllic as we often like to make it.  But, despite my low wages, for today's work I will be paid four hours for twenty minutes actual work.  Including phone calls and paperwork it would be more like forty-five minutes.  Still a deal.

This happens often.  Despite the other crap there is a lot of freedom and flexibility in this job.  On top of that there is the joy of working with people who are also moving forward in their lives and recovery.  I am always learning, every day, on the job.  I also get to do my art in many instances while supporting clients as an art therapist to explore art and creativity as part of their recovery process.

There will never be a dream job.  There will always be nightmare jobs.  Mine is the choice of where I am going to direct my gaze and mine is the choice as to what besides a paycheque I can expect to draw from this kind of work and service.  This work is real, if imperfect.  It keeps me grounded and moves me forward.

Take This Job And... 11

Ever been called a piece of work?  Oh what a thing to be called.  I just had a look at Urban Dictionary and here are some of the definitions they have to offer:

Someone who -- although often interesting -- is difficult to get along with on an every day basis. They often make simple things overly complex, or argue points ad infinitum.

Unaware of one's foolishness. Originates from "What a Piece of Work is Man" monologue from Hamlet. More precisely an ironic reflection of how little most men achieve despite being endowed with relatively enormous powers to act and reason. Generally used as a sarcastic "compliment."

A person whose stupidity and ignorance never fail to amaze you.

a person who is both crazed and bizarre, yet charming at the same time

Had enough?  Has anyone seen the movie about comedienne Joan Rivers, "Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work?"

As well as being a piece of work, Rivers made her life her own piece of work.  Regardless of what you think of her comedy (for me she erred rather much on the side of nasty) there appears to be a seamless consistency between her life and her work, or the work of her life and the life of her work.  This alone would make her the envy of many.

Take This Job And..., 10

Get a job.  Just be glad you have a job. Follow your bliss.  Follow your dream.  Dream job. Take this job and shove it.  We do have a love-hate relationship with our work most of us.  It keeps us alive, it pays the bills and in so many ways it defines us.

Just today I was gushing on to a stranger in a coffee shop about how much I love my work, how rewarding it is, how meaningful, how wonderful,  yadda yadda yadda, gag, barf!

But I do love my job.  Often.  Not always.  Okay, sometimes.  Now and then.  Occasionally? There are challenges and risks and face it, a chronic weltering sense of disempowerment.  I know this work is good for me.  I spend much of my time giving, giving of myself, giving of my very best, to see that my clients do well, learn and acquire a sense of empowerment, enhance their quality of life, become more independent.  This is almost always rewarding and gratifying and the encounters usually positive and life-affirming. 

I am also stranded in my job.  There was a time, some forty years ago when I was only a year in the work force and it was relatively easy to simply walk away from an unsatisfactory job and find something better.  In those days Unemployment Insurance (now stupidly renamed Employment Insurance) was easy to get. If you were laid off you could begin to collect within a couple of weeks the value of two thirds or more of your earnings for up to a year.  If you quit or were fired from your job you were disqualified for up to six weeks.  If you had saved a little money you would make it through.

My, how things have changed.  In the early nineties after gradually scaling back, the Federal Government drastically "reformed" Unemployment Insurance.  Dumbly renamed it Employment Insurance and made it all but impossible for people to collect unless they worked a minimum of more than nine hundred hours for the past year.  If your work was part time or casual you were out of luck.  If you quit your job your only resort was welfare, a hugely reduced standard of living and the likelihood of having to abandon your apartment for a room in a shared house or a single room occupancy, or the sidewalk, the doorway or under a bridge.

The Employment Insurance Commission soon swelled with a surplus of more than five billion dollars.  Even though I have not benefited from their largess since 1990, until I was working contracts I still had to pay into their gaping maw.  I do not expect to get a refund.

It goes without saying that on the part of the federal government in Ottawa this was a cynical ploy with two objectives in mind: to further disable and cow the work force into submitting to the onerous and low paying jobs that were the bitter and poison fruit of the massive foreign investment brought on by NAFTA and other free trade agreements; and as a salvo to the conservative voters who tend to be wealthy business owners or ignorant rednecks.  I forgot to mention by the way that these measures were implemented by a Liberal government as a ploy for drawing voters away from the already disgraced Conservative support base.

As workers we live in more straitened circumstances than ever.  To abandon a meaningless, oppressive and low paying job carries often severe penalties: a reduced standard of living, poverty, and sometimes homelessness and hunger.  I still have more than five years before hitting retirement age.  I will see what I can do to white-knuckle it.

Take This Job And..., 9

"Get a job!"  Sound familiar?  Often said to street beggars, especially when they are apparently able-bodied young males.  We have plenty here in Vancouver.  The ones with cardboard signs asking for donations for beer and pot.  The kind of panhandlers we love to hate.  Our beggars are often of this category, unlike Mexico where they tend to be severely disabled, or grandmothers, or single mothers with children, or children.  The very poor able bodied males who are not able to get by on low paying employment often turn to crime or they immigrate to the US and Canada, El Norte, which is my guess why they are not that often seen in Mexico City.  I would also imagine they don't garner as much compassion.

I have no time for those who judge others by their appearance, even though I do it all the time.  Once about nine years ago in the shopping district of an affluent neighbourhood I noticed a well dressed middle age man harassing a homeless fellow begging on the sidewalk.  "Why don't you get a job?" he asked him over and over as though he couldn't think of something intelligent to say.  I wondered about intervening but instead stood still and stared at the aggressor.  He could not handle my glare and quickly left.  I smiled at the homeless man then went on my way.

A Christian pastor of an independent church I have the pleasure of knowing once mentioned to me that a lot of people on welfare don't want to work.  I asked him how he knows this for sure.  Have you talked to any of them?  Do you  know any of them?  Have they told you their story?  No?  Then how can you be sure?

I should note here that this pastor soon ended our friendship accusing me of shooting him down whenever he wanted to express an opinion.  Fair enough.

I don't doubt for a minute that there are people who don't want to work.  When you have few or no skills and have lived with rejection and abuse all your life it is not exactly a smorgasbord of opportunity awaiting you in the job market.  Many actually do want to work but it is very difficult to connect skills with decent remunerative employment.  My guess is that so many of the so-called employable young men (and women) seen sprawled on the pavement aren't even work ready.  They have no fixed address, often suffer from addictions, lack social skills, their hygiene is poor, their clothes ready to fall off their back, and many suffer from depression, anxiety, PTSD and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum disorder, among other mental health issues.  Many people who live with mental illness present as being quite well.  Yet, on first sight, they are judged as able bodied but intentionally lazy and useless and their vicious cycles of destructive behaviour simply confirm and entrench the harsh judgment that is society's gift to them.  Then there are those who do work but can't earn enough to keep a roof over their head.  Or they've been denied or kicked off of welfare because they are considered employable but unwilling to work.  Their new career?  Street begging.  Or selling drugs.  Or selling their bodies.  Or crime.  Sometimes suicide.

When I was on welfare for three and a half years and suffering from undiagnosed PTSD I wanted to work.  I could find nothing sustainable.  I ended up in short term positions and given my mental health situation I was not able to work according to expectations.  Intense job searches were fruitless and useless because I simply wasn't what employers seemed to be looking for.

I began to feel better.  I convinced welfare, following a major meltdown with a bullying financial aid worker to leave me alone and change my status.  They left me alone, letting me collect my meagre cheque every month while I began to prepare myself for my new profession.  I spent almost a year doing volunteer work with the homeless, then found employment in a homeless shelter.  Not a good fit, and I was up against some very nasty and bullying coworkers but I lasted more than a year and picked up invaluable skills.

I have been a mental health peer support worker for eleven years.  It is not exactly a dream job and the pay is terrible but I have done well, enjoy the work, my clients and my coworkers.  Thanks to the blessing of BC Housing I pay incredibly low rent, have a savings account, and money to spare for travel.

None of what has happened for me could have occurred without help and support from others and help from God.  No one really pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps.  Especially when they don't own a pair of boots.  We don't rise alone.  We do this together and we support one another.  The success of one is the success of many.

Take This Job And...,8

It is interesting how much our employment can so dominate and control our lives that it becomes our lives.  I don't even work a full forty hour week, yet in the evenings I'm whacked.  Instead of going to evening social events I arrange to meet friends for coffee or a bite to eat usually no later than 6, after work, assuring me that I can comfortably get home by 8 and roll into bed nice and early.

I've also learned the hard way how much involvement in church can negatively impact the quality of my work in my day job.  This really came to my attention during my involvement for more than six years in my neighbourhood Anglican parish church.  I was not a good "fit" in this parish and often felt sidelined and excluded by what turned out to be a church full of superannuated high school cliques.  This became for me very painful at times, so painful as to be at times traumatizing, given that I am very much alone in the world.

I soon discovered a pattern.  Whenever something went south for me at church problems would very quickly follow at work.  It turned into an indelible pattern.  And always in that order.  I almost got fired, unconsciously transferring my problems with my parish family onto my colleagues and coworkers at work.  I also discovered that when I took lengthy vacations from church the quality of my work would appreciate noticeably.

Now Anglicans don't tend to believe much in having a personal relationship with Christ.  It's all about the church, the institution.  (I don't believe in this by the way) Our relationship with God is vetted through our relationship with the church.  If we are in relation with God, it is expected that we will attend Sunday eucharist every week and do everything we can to participate and volunteer our time and energy.  I am not saying here that Anglicans don't have a personal relationship with Christ, many do, but they tend to keep quiet about this because it is simply not done.  The frenzy of participation and volunteer work at the church is supposed to energize us spiritually and prepare us for our week of work, family and whatever else for the next six days of the week.

I only wish this were really so.  For me church is not refreshing or restorative.  For me church is exhausting.  Having also to deal with dysfunctional adults with bad attitudes who often are pillars in the church simply complicates things.

Like my recent experience with the choir.  Under pressure from almost everyone in my new parish church I agreed to join the choir.  I didn't enjoy one single minute, felt worked like a horse and also was irritated beyond return by two choir members, one with a tendency of making misogynistic comments about women, the other a nasty bitch who must always have her way.  These are also considered very important people in the church so, cross them at your peril.

During this difficult period with choir things really began to go south for me at work.  Receiving nothing in the way of support at church and much in the way of exhaustion I watched in wonder as some very critical aspects of my support network at work began to blow up in my face.

I am much better now.  I have left the choir and named the two individuals causing me stress.  I have also decided to decline any further active participation in the services.  I will simply attend, take my communion, say the appropriate responses and say hi and chat with people during the coffee hour.

Church does not pay my bills.

Church is not my relationship with God.  These are two very distinct and separate entities.  And you know something?  From now on they are going to stay this way.

Take This Job And...,7

What are the alternatives to working for a living?  Besides being independently wealthy.  Or going on welfare.  There appears to be nothing.  We sell our time, energy, sweat, inspiration, and sometimes our mental and physical health in order to keep a roof over our heads, feed ourselves, support our families, clothe our bodies, and partake in the many fleeting pleasures of life.

From our teenage years till our retirement some forty or fifty years later we are going to be dedicating on average one third of our lives to our work.  Nobody is going to give a damn whether we like our jobs or not.  It is called work for a reason.

There are other things at play: the sense of contributing to the common good, the challenge of learning and using our skills and knowledge, the camaraderie of working with others, if you and the work happen to be a good fit.

There is not enough time here to go into the history of work in a post industrial, post tech society governed by rapacious global capitalism.  Suffice it to say that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to earn your living bread only by the sweat of your brow.  Because of market demands and the ever shifting economy and the legendary greed of the One Percent it is getting harder and harder to feed, clothe and house ourselves and our loved ones through our efforts at work.  The cost of living, especially of housing is skyrocketing while our wages and salaries remain stagnant.

It would seem then that a guaranteed minimum income for all should be the way of the future if we don't want to see our society eroded and destroyed by the kind of extreme and large scale poverty that is likely to result if things remain unchecked.

The wealthy minority will have to continue coughing up the tax dollars in order to provide for our sorry asses as we all become equally paralyzed by poverty in this glorious New Age where the vast majority of wealth becomes concentrated in the soft greedy hands of the obscenely wealthy few.  Good luck getting them to cough.

We need to work against this.  And we need a vision for our future.  Now.

Take This Job And... 6

Work is important and essential for so many reasons.  Yes, we need the income, we need to survive, but work isn't always a guarantee of this if you happen to be in low paying employment having to rely on food banks and low barrier shelters in order to survive.  The existence of society is dependent upon our work.  We all have a role to play: the cook, the lawyer, the waiter, the doctor, the janitor, the teacher, the drycleaner, the artist, the carpenter and many, many more.  Even the humble mental health peer support worker plays an important role and sometimes even the psychiatrist!

My job keeps me alive only because I have the blessing of social housing and thus extremely low rent.  I am good at budgeting, don't have a car and no bad habits.  I am also a vegetarian and not overly concerned about clothes.  I am also careful not to waste food.  So, I can save money even though I earn twelve glorious bucks an hour.  If I did not have the blessing of social housing and if my lifestyle was typical of Canadian consumerism I would not be able to live in Vancouver and it would even be difficult for me to live in cheaper communities.

There is nothing at all empowering about my job.  I am at the bottom of the food chain.  A prolonged sense of powerlessness is known to be detrimental to good mental health.  Only by focussing on giving good care to my clients and working well with my coworkers makes these conditions tolerable.  But only up to a point.

For years I have gone totally Pollyanna about my job, stubbornly focussing on the positives while the negatives secreted into my soul their subtle and lethal toxins.  Last week two lousy days on the job brought it all to a head and I found myself in the middle of a meltdown.

The emotions have subsided.  Coworkers and supervisors are again treating me with kindness and in certain cases almost excessive kindness.  My contribution again feels appreciated, even honoured and the grief about systemic and structural injustice and humiliation lurk in the background like a sour, bitter shadow.

There's a lot to be grateful for.  I enjoy my work.  I eat well every day. I enjoy good health, good faithful friends, a vibrant church community, good mental health, and free and abundant artistic expression.  I am financially flush enough to prepare another trip to Latin America.  I am also exploited and unfairly remunerated in my work.  I have to find a way to live between these two visions of my vocation, euphoric and dystopic because that is the reality.  I also try to remember the many whose working conditions and remuneration are worse than what I could even imagine for myself.

And as much as I hate this saying, at least I have a job.

Take This Job And...5

Having a job is not a privilege.  It is a right.  But the way the market for employment is arranged it always seems like a privilege.  You have to perform throughout and if you make one little slip during the interview you're out.  We have an obligation as well as a right to work.  Try convincing a prospective employer who is going to pick whomever he bloody well pleases.  If he doesn't like balding men or women who wear glasses or faces with acne scars or assertive trans women who can force him to hire you?
Our very survival depends on work.

That is the problem.  In order to have food on the table today and tomorrow, in order to have a table and a home to put it in we have to trade off our time, energy, sweat and emotional wellbeing, in effect our very souls, working for not necessarily grateful bosses and all for the privilege of waking up in the same bed the next morning that we went to sleep in the night before.

A boss will pay you whatever they want and get away with it so long as it is no less than the legal minimum wage.  It doesn't have to be a living wage.  It often isn't.  If you can't survive on your earnings learn how to budget.  Move to a cheaper apartment.  If you can't afford an apartment share with a roommate.  If that isn't possible then go live on the sidewalk or in a low barriers shelter and get your food free at the food bank.  If your health suffers and you die prematurely think of it as a boon to lowering the global population.

If our elected governments are going to remain lackeys to global market capitalism then they are going to be reluctant to enact reforms that will guarantee an even distribution of goods and wealth to the people who elected them.  Wages will remain low and even artificially depressed as long as the market thrives.  Only, how much longer is the market going to thrive when there are going to be so few who can still afford to buy anything?

Several times a guaranteed annual income for all Canadians, of around $15,000 a year has been recommended. I love this idea.  For the first time in our lives we will no longer have to be entirely beholden to a fickle employer just to have a room to sleep in, much less a house with a yard.  Employers, often business owners, loathe this idea.  They imagine that they would never be able to find anyone who isn't a temporary foreign worker to work for the shit wages and humiliating treatment they have to offer. 

If we do manage to break out of the survival work prison we will also say goodbye to the notion that anyone has the power to blackmail us into lifetime servitude for the simple pleasure of living another day longer.

Chronic low pay causes so many problems: a poor quality of life, poor nutrition, poor health, low self-esteem and social isolation among them.  In my occupation of mental health peer support work we are chronically underpaid and for this reason we cannot really flourish in this kind of work.  Only subsist.

And this kind of chronic underpaid servitude can't be realistically expected to do much to enhance our experience of mental health recovery.

Take This Job And..., 4

I really believe that peer support workers make up the least understood category of employee in the mental health system.  We are simultaneously client and colleague, in most cases.  In our monthly meetings many of us discuss our medications, side-effects and hospitalizations the way other staff meetings are full of chatter about what's on TV, who won the game and where you're going for vacation this year.

It is not an easy or comfortable fit and for me it is even less so given my rather unorthodox history of treatment and recovery.  I have never been on medication and have never been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons and for this reason I often feel out of the loop among my colleagues.  I also don't buy this false empathy that is expected to arise out of referring to our clients as peers instead of clients.  This serves no real value except to further ghettoize and stigmatize the peer support workers in the work place.  It is a quiet way of accepting that we are damaged, that we are not considered peers by our professional co-workers, but a rather specialized class of client, making us professionally somewhat less and something inferior.

We are the Rodney Dangerfields of the mental health field.  We don't get no respect.

We are the chopped liver section in the deli display case.

Chronic low pay entrenches stigma.  This I said to a person in upper management.  Soon after, I was threatened with dismissal if I didn't shut up about the injustices that have become for peer support workers our daily bread.

Others in upper management have cynically suggested that peer support workers be given the lion's share of positions in a future mental health treatment facility.  We are after all famous for our empathy and our ability to identify so closely with the recovery process, having been there ourselves.  Since they would have no intention of giving us a pay raise we would continue to do work that is worth three times the market value of the twelve glorious bucks an hour that we have been earning for the past six years.  Think of all the money that would be saved for the taxpayer.  Think of the gigantic raises that upper management and administration could award themselves with (but they do that already).  Think of the absolute cynical insult to the dignity and intelligence of both peer support workers and the various rehab professionals, nurses and social workers we would be expected to replace.

It is a challenge living in a state of cognitive dissonance and still being able to do my job well.  I love my clients and my coworkers alike.  This is one of the richest most rewarding jobs I have ever done.  It is the chronic lack of respect and recognition that presents me with my greatest challenges.  For the very fact that our profession requires us to bare some of the most intimate secrets of our souls, our experience of mental illness and recovery, in order to do our job well, we surely deserve decent remuneration for our work.  A living wage and respect would be a lovely way to begin.

Take This Job And..., 3

I make a living off of my alleged disability.  I say alleged because I am quite fully recovered from PTSD.  I don't simply just live with it or cope with it.  I am really and truly over it.  It doesn't mean I don't suffer occasionally from triggers but there are no relapses and I take care of myself in all ways to ensure that my mental health doesn't deteriorate again.

In the mental health system where I work they do not believe usually in this kind of recovery.  Once sick always sick.  You are expected to remain for the rest of your life on medications and under the care of the kind professionals and therapists of your friendly neighbourhood mental health team.  Should you be accepted for the training as a peer support worker and land yourself a couple of paying gigs, so much the better.

But they are still going to see you as being sick.  Or not quite well.  Or fragile.  Or not completely stable and therefore not thoroughly competent, professional and certainly not to be trusted.  The stigma never quite goes away.

One of the more annoying features of my eleven years as a mental health peer support worker has been having to field, negotiate and at times openly fight with ignorant but well-meaning mental health professionals.  There was the occupational therapist expressing amazement and trepidation that I am no longer in the capable hands of a psychiatrist; the psychiatrist in one of the mental health teams where I work asking nosy and inappropriate questions about my diagnosis and the wisdom of not being on medication; particularly egregious have been the mental health colleagues (a case manager and an occupational therapist) insisting on outing me to new clients.  The absolute disrespect has only been matched by their utter stupidity.  The OT in question, even after being repeatedly reminded that if anyone is going to reveal information about my mental health experience it is going to be me and no one but me, on three occasions while meeting with new clients, unbidden, and without my permission, said "and Aaron has also had a mental illness and he still is mentally ill."

I let the bitch have it over that one, especially after the third offence.  She played dumb and tried to convince me that I was the one with the problem because I appeared to be ashamed of having a mental illness.  I replied by telling her that it is my diagnosis, not hers and for that matter I am long recovered and if she is unable to respect so simple and clear a boundary then she and I should not be working together.

I could go on.  The fact is, working as a peer support worker, I am never quite been able to forget altogether that I ever had a mental health diagnosis and just get on with my life.  It is always being waved in my face like a bloody red flag by well meaning mental health professionals that often don't have a clue what they are talking about.

Idiots!

Take This Job And..., 2

In the hierarchy of the organization that employs me I occupy the bottom rung.  Peer Support Workers are still often treated like glorified volunteers who are paid an honorarium (we are actually paid way below living wage, just a little above minimum) and that most of us are, if not still suffering from mental health symptoms, then are considered still not entirely well.  We are often patronized and our work regarded as unimportant.  Some of this has changed and I find that a number of my highly paid co-workers actually know us better now and respect and value the quality of our work and contribution.  The last ones to come on board unfortunately but unsurprisingly are the psychiatrists, but psychiatrists as we all know usually think they are god.  God with a very, very small g.

Still I am not considered a full participant in any of the four sites where I work.  Most of the staff meetings (in one site, all of them) are closed to me, even though I am under the same oath of confidentiality and continuing care as the rest of my co-workers.  Neither do I have free access to my worksites.  A student recreational therapist who is going to be there for six weeks is still given a key card.  I have to ring the doorbell to get in.  Every single time.

If I happen to be occupying a room or space in order to get my work done and another worker wants the space then I am expected to immediately cede that space.  If I am needing space to which I have already been assigned and a higher ranking co-worker is already there, even if she or he is not using the space for important work then I am still expected to wait until he or she is good and ready to allow me to use the space at his or her pleasure and if I am not able to finish my work then I will get blamed for it.

I am sick of this.  This degrading and chronic dynamic has worn me down over the years.  Fortunately most of my co-workers and supervisors are aware of this and bend over backwards to try to make things easier and tolerable to me.  Still, the only way the situation is going to be made tolerable will be when it changes, when I and other peer support workers are paid a decent and living wage and when we are no longer treated as professional inferiors doing work of less value than our highly paid colleagues.

I am not optimistic.

Take This Job And...

Ah, work stress.  What would our lives be without it.  It seems that no matter how much we enjoy our work it still remains just that.  Work.  We have to hock our time and our lives for, in my case anyway, a pittance that will keep us alive for one more day to barter our lives and, dare I say, dignity, for yet another day in order to stay alive. 

It isn't all bad.  Especially if, like me, you already love your work, or at least significant aspects.  I am a mental health peer support worker and there is nothing like being able to walk so closely with others as they are struggling and stumbling their way towards mental health recovery and to see real improvements made in their quality of life.

However, after eleven years of turning a mostly blind eye to the accumulating injustices, indignities and humiliations of being treated chronically like a third class citizen I have reached breaking point.  I have been working and living in a state of cognitive dissonance.  Loving and thriving on my work with my clients while barely tolerating the heartless and sociopathic douchebags that run the organization that employs me.  (of course I am not going to name them here.  As I mentioned in an earlier post they tend to be vindictive, unforgiving and vicious when criticized, especially by an employee who is stranded at the bottom of their food chain.)

In the last three days the boil has burst and oh what a stinky, slimy and sordid mess.  Monday I was put in potential danger by a client.  Tuesday I was nearly threatened with dismissal for being assertive with an arrogant psychiatrist.

Given that almost six years ago, when we were given a one dollar raise to twelve whopping bucks an hour in exchange for letting them cut our hospitality budget for our clients in half I protested along with one of my bosses.  We were both threatened with dismissal if we did not shut up about it.

I have carried this burden of anger and resentment for almost six years, based on a sense of powerlessness and fear.  This evening, knowing that this resentment was slowly poisoning me, I have forgiven the administration and upper management of my organization.  I don't know what this is going to mean but I do feel better and relieved of something nasty I seem to have been carrying for a while.

This does not mean that I am suddenly going to trust them.  And it doesn't let them off the hook.  But at least I no longer hate them and this is going to set me free, somewhat.

Speaking of forgiveness, by the way, it is an act of the will.  I didn't enact forgiveness because I felt like it, only because I knew that God was commanding me.  It is an act of obedience.  The sense of relief, the absence of resentment and the desire to if not love at least to wish my oppressors well follows.  This does not change our relationship in any way.  They are still oppressors who govern our organization knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.  But I will no longer be hobbled by hate towards them.  And maybe this in turn will open the way for good to come of this situation.  Stranger things have happened.

Thirteen Crucifixions: Conclusion

“I got an e-mail from Persimmon Carlyle yesterday”, Sheila said suddenly.

            “She doesn’t want to do a documentary about us!” Michael groaned.

            “She did say that she’d like to come for a visit.”

            “Persimmon…Carlyle?” Adam said.

            “You know her?” Glen said.

            “No.  It’s just the name.  It sounds stage-y.”

            “She is a piece of work”, Michael said.

            “I think you’ll see that she’s changed some”, Sheila said.

            “She can’t have gotten worse.”

            “Better, I’d say.”

            “When is she coming?” Lazarus said.

            “Do you know her?” asked Michael.

            “We were both in the house the last week before I came here.

            “What did you think of her?”

            “She was nice.  Sociable.  Considerate.”

            “Persimmon Carlyle?”

            “I did say that she’s changed”, Sheila said.

            “Is there a story here?” Adam said.

            “We didn’t get off to the greatest start with each other”, said Glen.

            “What—didn’t she used to be on the news?”

            “She was an anchor woman and investigative reporter for CBC”, Michael said, “And she made our lives hell for a while.”

            “Our lives?”

            “Glen’s and mine.”

            “So, bite me.”

            “It was when I lived in Pamela’s house back almost ten years ago.  Persimmon was trying to expose us as a dangerous cult.”

            “Like this place”, said Adam.

            “That was the Shaughnessy mansion with the AIDS victims?” asked Lazarus.

            “I was interviewing a resident”, Michael said, “For a series I was writing on AIDS for the Globe and Mail.”

            “Stephen.” Glen said.

            “You were friends, weren’t you?”

            “Very good friends.  He died, I believe, shortly after.

            “Then Persimmon Carlyle tried to undermine everything.”

            “Her efforts did help to destroy us”, Glen said, “As a community.  I haven’t really seen her since.  I didn’t even speak to her when she was doing the documentary.”

            “She says that it precipitated an enormous change in her life”, said Sheila.  “She has also emphatically stated, Michael, that she would like to meet with you sometime.”

            “I can’t see how I can stop her, if she’s going to visit here.”

            “I’m going to talk to Chris about it”, Sheila said.

            “How did you get all friendly with her?” said Michael.

            “Bill.”

            “Your ex?”

            As Sheila nodded, Michael began to sing, “Just a Gigolo—“

            “Michael!” she snapped with maternal emphasis.

            “Sorry Mummy.”  Adam alone seemed to see any humour in it. Then Michael said, “So now they’re fucking each other.”

            “I would imagine they were for a while, though I care not to—“

            “—Yes”, Lazarus said, “Spare us the visuals, please.”

            “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” said Matthew.

            “My son hasn’t kissed me since he was a small boy.”

            “Are you complaining or are you bragging?” Michael said, and then, as though catching the humour of the situation, everyone burst out laughing at once.

            “So”, Michael said, addressing his mother, “Tell me about Bill and Persimmon.”

            “You know he’s recovered from his mental illness.”

            “When you mentioned him and Persimmon being together I would have assumed that he’d had a relapse.”  More laughter.

            “But seriously”, Sheila said, “No, I mean seriously, it was being married to me that had made him ill.”

            “What!”

            “Well, not being married to me, specifically, but living in the house.”

            “The house?”

            “Michael”, Sheila said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I am awfully relieved to be free of that house now.”

            “Well, it did require a lot of upkeep.”

            “It wasn’t the upkeep.  There are things that I haven’t told you about the house.”

            “That it’s haunted?  I already knew that.”

            “Who told you?’

            “Nobody.  But I used to at times feel something, like a cold, damp and icky sort of presence.”

            “I learned some things about that house during the summer.  About its history.”

            “So tell me…everything.”

            “It started with the apple tree.”

            “The one in the back yard?” Glen asked.  Those were some of its apples you brought over here with you?  Delicious.

            “I thought they were galas”, said Adam, giggling.”

            “Golden apples”, said Lazarus.  “Not merely yellow but golden.  I was almost afraid to eat one.”

            “And so you should be afraid”, Sheila said.

            “What, they’re poisoned?” said Lazarus.

            “They are the apples.”

            “The apples?” Michael echoed.

            “The original apples.”

            “Like, the earliest breed?” said Matthew.

            “Or whatever.  The tree was part of an orchard that was ploughed under in order to build houses.  Where we lived was once a farm. But the original seeds for these apples, of which our tree is the sole survivor, came from the Azores.”

            “How did they get here from the Azores?” said Matthew.

            “By way of a Portuguese immigrant.  In the 1880’s.”

            “So these apples came from the Azores”, said Lazarus.

            “They were descended from the tree that bore the legendary golden apples in the Hesperides.  The Western Isles of Greek myth.  The last remnants of Atlantis, some believe.  Legend has it that Atlantis was destroyed in a day and a night by a great cataclysm some ten thousand years ago and that such scattered islands in the Atlantic as the Azores were once its highest mountain peaks.”

            “Do you believe in Atlantis?” said Michael.

            “Maybe.  Maybe not. When I was painting the apple tree last spring—most of you, I think, have seen it, the one with—“

            “The symbolism?” said Lazarus.

            “Yes.  Well, on Madge’s suggestion, I invited a psychic, her brother-in-law, actually-to come have a look at the tree.  He hadn’t seen the painting yet, but he described it in accurate detail , and then said that it was from Atlantis, and that I should leave the house because a great destruction was going to come from the tree.   I showed him the painting.  It was exactly as he had seen it.”

            “Why did you bring the apples?” said Adam.  He looked at her, his eyes sparkling like cut beryls

            “I don’t know why.”

            “Has everyone here eaten any?  Yes, all of us.  One each?  Yes, me too.  Do you remember how many apples you brought with you?”

            “Twelve.”

            “Well, here they are on the coffee table.  How many remain?  Six?  So then no one else has had any?  No?  Then, I am going to suggest that we finish them, now.”

            “I thought of making a cobbler with them.”

            “Let’s eat”, Adam said, taking an apple and then passing the basket.

            “Why are we doing this?” said Lazarus.

            “It’s called destroying the evidence.”

            “Evidence of what?”

            “Never mind, young man, just do as you’re told.”

            Sheila said to Adam, “You look like someone I’ve seen in a dream.”

            “Is that what you tell all the boys?” Matthew said.

            “Privileged boys”, Sheila answered .

            “Do I look like someone in the painting you just told us about?”

            “A little, not a lot, but—“

            “I am as human as the rest of you.”

            “But where do you come from?”

            “Matthew said, “You are a mystery here, Adam. Tell us about you.  Tell us all about you.”

            “I was born in Russia, in Leningrad, in 1979.  My mother was a dancer with the Kirov.  I never knew my father. Apparently neither did she.”

            “Virgin birth?” said Michael.

            Well, my mother was not a virgin.  But let’s just say that, she didn’t know how I was conceived.”

            “I had a girlfriend like that”, said Lazarus.  One morning she just woke up and she was pregnant.”

            “But you already knew that it was your kid”, Glen said.

            “Yeah, the stupid bitch.”

            “Have you had any word from your ex?” Matthew said.

            “I sent her a couple of e-mails last month.  Nothing.

            “I’m sorry”, Matthew said, “But some women can be absolutely evil that way.”

            “You’ve never heard of dead-beat dads?” Sheila said acidly.

            “I sure had one of those, myself”, Michael said.

            “Is he still alive?” said Adam.

            “No.  He died from AIDS.  Pretty ironic, when you think about it.”

            “So, Adam”, Sheila said. “Neither you or your mother know who your father is.  But surely you came from someone?”

            “She thought that she might have been date-raped.  Women in Russia are not respected the way they are here. Men get away with anything.”

            “Where is she now?” Sheila asked.

            “She died in Budapest, when the Kirov was on tour.  I was just five. I had a great aunt in Hungary who took me in her care—my mother had no living family left in Russia.  She somehow got me out of Hungary and we ended up in London, where I lived till I was twenty, then I immigrated to Canada.”

            “How did she die?” Sheila asked.

            “Nobody knows.  Actually, she disappeared.  They found her clothes under a tree somewhere, but no remains. It was a though she’d just been taken out of her clothes.

            “Like the Portuguese widow”, said Sheila.

            “Come again?’ said Matthew.

            “Before Michael’s father and I bought the house it had been vacant for some years, but before that it was owned by a Portuguese widow.  I was a kid then—I grew up in that neighbourhood, but we used to refer to her as the Hag.  We had a superstitious dread of her, the poor woman.  She did nothing to deserve it either, but we were a neighbourhood of WASPS with a sudden incursion of Italian and Portuguese immigrants. Only this woman’s family had been pioneers here.  She didn’t mix with the Portuguese newcomers—but she was from the Azores, so they seemed to regard her as something different.  So when I was fourteen, this woman, this Mrs. De Souza, died.  Or disappeared.  Coincidentally within hours of my father’s death in Korea—he was fighting in the war over there.  They found Mrs. De Souza’s clothes under the apple tree.  It was as though she’d lifted right out of them.  Like your mother, Adam.”

            “Are you telling us the truth?” said Michael.

            “No.”

            “Then who are you, really?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

            “Somebody told me that that’s who I was.”

            “Who told you, Adam?” Michael said.

            “I don’t know.  My memory goes back only a few months—when I met you, Matthew, but beyond that—“

            “—You have amnesia?” Sheila said.

            “I have something.”

            “You’re absolutely sure”, Matthew said, “That you remember nothing beyond six months ago.”

            “I walked into your shop with the Faberge eggs, and –“

            “The eggs, who gave you the eggs?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Did you find them, did you steal them—look, I haven’t told you this, but I had experts in to look at those eggs.  They declared them to be authentic, but they could not trace them.”

            “It’s a mystery”, Adam said.

            “Have you been to a doctor, Adam?” Sheila said.

            “No.”

            “Well, then you must see one.”

            “I suppose that I must.”

            “Please, as soon as possible.”

            “Does Chris know anything about this?” Michael said.

            “He knows only what I have told him, which is what I have told you.”

            “Yes.  I see.”

            “And, till now, I believed it myself.”

            “We must get you some help”, Sheila said.  “Today.”

            “Wait.  I remember something”, Adam said, apparently on the point of tears.  “That young guy Chris brought back.  Peter.  I talked with him the morning he left us.  This car pulled in to take him away somewhere. Well, I know the driver.  Then I looked at Peter and told him, ‘We’ve both drunk from the fountain of forgetfulness.’  Then, just as he was getting in the car, he said to me, ‘And one day we’ll both remember.’

            He was crying now.  “This is very frustrating.  I know there’s more.  Way more.”

            “Have you tried writing things down?” Michael said.

            “Maybe I should”, he said, his fists clenched as the tears streamed freely down his face.  “The fountain.  The gargoyle fountain.  On top of a column, water was spouting from its mouth.  I drank the water of forgetfulness.  On an island, not far from here.  On a plateau in the middle, surrounded by thick forest, impregnable, unless you’re “expected”, and then the trees open and there’s a path you can climb to the top, to a clearing where—where I saw that fountain, and the big house.  Big, big house like a palace or something, and this old couple lives there, only they’re extremely beautiful and wise and they have contact with the Millionth Council, they are among the Watchers who guard this planet, and they, they’re warning us of a huge ecological disaster coming inside of ten years, unless we change our way of living, all of us, and I was brought there—how, I do not know, but I woke up on the beach, and—and the trees opened.  I climbed the path, I was received into the house by the old woman.  She was very kind.  And tall.  They were both tall, not quite seven feet. And they said I was there to be healed, after which they would send me forth with a new name, a new—identity and—I would be a servant of the Millionth Council and a catalyst for good and for the healing of souls, of broken hearts, for the healing of this planet, and—I am but an instrument of the light you see around me, I am not its source, and if I could but speak clearly and openly of the love that struggles within me to reveal itself to all of you here—I’m sorry.  I got carried away.”

            “What did you do inside this big house”, Michael asked.

            “I just hung-out.  Rested.  Ate good food.   Walked around on the grounds.  Read.  They have a huge library that spans several rooms. I only wish I could remember what it was that I read—“

            “How long were you there?”

            “I don’t know.  I only know that what I’ve told you is more than what they’d permit me.  I might suffer because of this—”

            “No.”  The voice belonged to a mature woman.  Not Sheila’s but much stronger and more resonant.  They all turned to see a tall old woman with white hair wearing tweeds, standing near the door.

            “Mother!” cried Adam.

            “And so I am Mother.  To all of you here.  I come in peace and grace and full of good will.  The young man called Adam shall suffer nothing, for it is time that all be revealed.  To all of you here, you shall continue to be a refuge and a place of growth, shelter and healing.  We shall send to you our protegees, and they shall help strengthen and establish in you the presence divine that shall make of this place one of the places of refuge for when the catastrophe falls upon the earth.  I urge you all to continue on the path of enlightenment that is the way of unconditional love, and so shall the Christ Child be born anew in your hearts and in your lives and so you shall be made ever more conscious of the new way that opens among you.  I have spoken and I speak in the Name of the Great Shepherd who gives his life for his sheep, who hear his voice.”

            Had she been dreaming?  When Sheila opened her eyes, she was seated alone in the common room.  But that woman, that presence.  Did this happen?  She must be sure to ask Michael.  She had seen this woman before, she was sure she had seen her.  She had seen her enrobed in a white flaming light as she walked out of the apple tree and into the house, her presence immolating it to a charred rectangle.  She was the fire that had come out of the tree towards the house.   She wanted to but feared telling any of this to Chris.  The boy, Adam, came in and sat next to the dozing cat, Tobias, whose plush white fur he began to stroke.  He looked up at her.

            “When you dozed off like that we thought we should leave you be for a while. I only came back to see how you’re doing.”

            “I’m fine.  Is she gone?”

            “She just vanished.”

            “Then she was—“

            “You weren’t dreaming.  It was not a hallucination.  But the others, they’ve all seemed to have forgotten.  She told me they’d remember soon enough.”

            “And us, you and I, I mean?”

            “She said that you and I will be teaching them to forget, so that soon they can remember, as though visiting their home for the very first time, and knowing suddenly that they are here.  You have a beautiful cat here. I’m so glad that he came here with you.”