Underneath my yellow skin

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You’re my best friend; part two

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Yesterday, I wrote about Kathleen, my oldest friend and one of my two best friends. Today, I’m going to write about my second-oldest friend and other best friend, Ian. We met on Twitter in 2012 during the elections. We both were night owls so we would chat in the wee hours of the night. I will admit that I thought he was cute, plus he was witty and smart as hell, so I was drawn to him.

We were both in a very dark place. Both suffering through breakups, though his relationship was much more long-lasting than mine, and we commiserated over that. I had a bunch of sleeping issues and used Twitter as a way of self-soothing. It wasn’t a good way, mind, as political Twitter was a hot mess, but it was the best I could do at the time.

I remember it was Halloween when we started DM’ing each other because we both had planned on going to a Halloween party with our respective others and were crushed it wasn’t going to happen. He encouraged me to go to the party, anyway, and have fun–and I did the same for him.

From that, sprung up our friendship. In the first four or years, neither of us was in a good place. For me, I was in the depth of my depression and anxiety. I thought life wasn’t worth living, and I was barely treading water. Ian was having a hard time, too, so our friendship was forged in fire.

Over the next four or five years, we both grew in leaps and bounds. I got serious about Taiji, which helped me with my mental health issues. It gave me the ability to walk in crowds without freaking out, to put up boundaries with my parents (not great ones, but anything was better than the nothing I had in place before), and it grounded me when I felt as if I were all over the place.


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You’re my best friend; part one

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I met Kathleen when I was twenty-two. It was at a nonprofit for at-risk youth, which is now defunct. It was a toxic workplace where people worked for ages and had given up hope of making it better. I was hired as a Day Treatment counselor and not trained at all. Yes, they expected a 22-year-eld, fresh out of college, to counsel juvenile delinquents (my nickname for them because they were all kids who had been arrested for something) without any training. I was only four or five years older than our oldest students (we were considered a school as well), which was not good for my position of authority. One of my students even told me he had a girlfriend my age. It was an uncomfortable moment.

Kathleen was the administrative assistant, and I noticed two things about her: her flaming red curls and the tattoo on her wrist. During the yearly luncheon, we sat next to each other and chatted. I already knew I didn’t fit in with my other colleagues for several reasons. One woman was heavily made-up and very critical of me for not wearing make-up. She once said that I needed lotion for my scabby elbows and that I would be a good makeover candidate. I didn’t tell her that I didn’t want to look like a painted doll the way she did, but I surely thought something much less kind than that about her.

All the other people were married with kids and beaten down by the job. Except one man who pushed and questioned authority, but he turned out to be a wife abuser. The one guy I really liked was pushed out for being a Christian. And the director sat at his desk playing computer games all day while the kids didn’t have a computer. I was getting paid $18,000, which is outrageous even for the time and my experience. I didn’t know better, though. Also, once I got hired, the lead counselor in the Day Treatment program sloughed off the daily activity calendar to me. Meaning I had to schedule activities for the kids every day. That was NEVER in the job description. He was a deeply narcissistic and lazy man who ‘delegated’ everything he could. I shared an office with him and my contempt for him grew daily. He spent most of his time reading People magazine and chatting with anyone who would talk to him. He liked the young white girls and assigned them to himself while fobbing the toughest boys onto our Christian coworker.

Who, by the way, I did not agree with on nearly anything, but I liked him heads better than anyone else in the place save Kathleen. He was hardworking and did anything he was asked to do. I remember one time, we were on a field trip and the van got a flat tire. The lead counselor called for a backup and when it came, shepherded everyone onto it, leaving our other colleague behind to change the tire. I felt bad for him and stayed with him.

During that luncheon, Kathleen and I got to talking. And she started calling me outside of work to hang out. I thought (and still think) she’s the coolest woman I had ever met, and I was gobsmacked that she wanted to be friends with me. I was a hot mess, riddled with deep depression and anxiety. I could not understand why someone who was so amazing would want to be friends with me.


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