T day + Soundtrack

I forgot to mention yesterday that I saw CC on the bus. Or think I did. This woman is her and she has lost her memory, or she is not CC. She sat across from me. She is bulkier than in 2010. Her clothing looked generic homeless person when before she had style, carried herself with a certain style. One of my neighbors sat next to her. I started talking to him so she could hear me. I mentioned her daughter's name. No reaction. Surreal, I told KH, to be sitting across from someone I ran with on and off for 13 years without them recognizing me. There is a story here. I feel an idle curiosity, no need to get an answer right now.

Which idle curiosity led me to what had been her mother's house. Googling her mother gave me a gravesite and info that she still resided on 18th Street. I was on the southside because a co-worker said he would have a food truck. I caught the bus to the southside but no co-worker. I decided to take a walk. No sign of life at the old place.

One thing the group counselor complained of in my recitation was my referring to CC as my crackhead girlfriend. She thought it demeaning. Perhaps it is. CC liked referring to herself as a crackologist and did not mind Queen of the Muncie crackheads. It was a descriptor, distinguishing her from my other girlfriends. The counselor objected so much to "crackhead girlfriend" that when I referred to "the crackhead thing" she loudly interrupted me with orders to stop referring to her as my crackhead girlfriend. I said I did not  say girlfriend and my recital went into a tailspin. Seems to me the counselor referring to CC is just as demeaning and worse as she would say she had quit that before the turn of the century. I tried explaining our relationship began as a transactional one and quickly morphed into different forms over the years we knew one another. My explanation was ignored.

It may have been at this point the counselor raised her right hand about a foot above the desk and said, "Mr. Hasler is one of those people who thinks he is up here" and then wriggled her fingers on the desktop as she went to say, "and everyone else is down here."

One of the saints that caught my attention going into the Orthodox Church was Saint Moses the Black; particularly, this story:

...Once the Fathers in Scete asked Moses to come to an assembly to judge the fault of a certain brother, but he refused. When they insisted, he took a basket which had a hole in it, filled it with sand, and carried it on his shoulders. When the Fathers saw him coming they asked him what the basket might mean. He answered, "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and I am come this day to judge failings which are not mine."

Not my business to judge others. My business is make amends for damage I have done - of which I have far less excuse than any person who was in my group.

Like I wrote yesterday, I spent too much time on the telephone last night.

This morning "Death and a Kiss" had 466 reads. DM found some errors and I have corrected them.

At work, I ran into this guy I had worked with last week. He had said he had spent most of his life in Muncie. I asked about a man who used to hang with CC. Which is how I found out a crack dealer I knew had been killed 5, 6 years ago. Beaten to death. The man went by Double D. I always thought him a bit older than me. My recollection had him about five six and maybe weighing 150. He was not the kind of drug dealer who drove a fancy car. He was more the guy who sold to support his habit. He was an okay guy, not crazy, not one I thought prone to violence, pleasant in his conversation. He did not deserve the death he got. 

I did not go to group therapy. The counselor had texted in Friday. I was too tired to call her after work but I did call yesterday. She did not reply to the message I left. She banished me, so she has to say it is time to come back. 

Yet, the more I thought how she told the group I thought myself superior to them. I came to two conclusions. First, I cannot imagine how she came to this conclusion - I had said nothing disparaging about any of the others - other than she feels threatened by my having been a lawyer. Almost never does she not mention my name without referring to me as a lawyer. She told me, again in front of the group, that she ran these meetings last week, this week and next week; not me. Fine by me, I am long past the urge to run anything, but struck me as a rather strident assertion of her authority. I am not conscious any act or expression on my part where I was trying to run things. Yes, I was trying to tell the story of my convoluted life while she said I was beating around the bush. Secondly, she had turned the group against me.

It has been a very long time since I was made to feel like the whipping boy. LAH or Steph. So decades ago. Which brings me to this entry in my soundtrack:

And so I did not go to group. I may go back to prison for failing to comply with court-ordered therapy. But was this therapy?

The English word therapy comes via Latin therapīa from Greek: θεραπεία and literally means "curing" or "healing".

I have the regular mental health counselor. I want to comply with the court's order. However, I do not trust this group therapy. I have kept my notes here on my group therapy.

I will admit it might have been different if Johnny and Joey were along for a ride:

I was going in today and lie about my motives. I got thinking I would need confess that when I got to a church and the priest would then send me back to tell them I lived. No sense chasing my tail. 

But I did tell two lies. First, I do not think of myself as a crackhead. I was passing through that scene as I passed through the rest if my life. Just seeing what was going on, just using them as an escape from boredom, and doing nothing to help them solve their problems, actually enabling their own self-harm. That is immoral. The counselor wanted to know my offense and I never got around to giving an answer. That would be my answer: my offense was to not treat as ends but as means, to not credit their humanity fully.

The second lie was why I got married. The counselor suggested I got married to acquire respectability. I agreed when respectability had nothing to do with my marriage when it was a rash grab for tranquility. That did not happen. What did happen was just me finding another to overcomplicate my life. I apologized to A- here.

As for being respectable, I am not and never would have been any more respectable than this:

Or this:

Or this:

And especially this:

After work, I went down to do my weekly registry check in. There was some wild life outside of work.

I waited for the 4:45 bus. I got an ice cream cone at The Barking Cow.

Then it was back to the room via McClure's for dinner (burritos). I think I fell asleep during "Farscape." I got another email from DM with editorial suggestions for "Death and a Kiss." Then I started on this post. Now it is time for a shower and maybe some Lillian Hellman.

Tomorrow, I will be going to Ball State looking for a replacement for my group therapist.

Chapter 9 of "Death and a Kiss" will not be coming out this Thursday. I am up to 476 reads.

And let me close out with the story of another foul up:

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