Installment Seventeen

"Joelly, look at me."

Dr. Call-Me-Larry spoke softly but I sensed an urgent pleading in his voice, more intense than he typically conveyed to me during our sessions.

"On a scale of one to ten, where is your mood today?"

Bloody hell. Not that game again. Minus two.

"I’m not in a good mood Larry, obviously. So I'd say I'm around a 1. Maybe a 2."

"Have you been taking your anti-depressants?"

No. Once I discovered they don’t mix well with alcohol, I chucked them and after all that trouble to get the drugs in the first place. I didn’t say that out loud. I just shook my head.

"Clearly something is upsetting you right now, today.”

I could tell him about Brian's decision to move to Beijing. We hadn't discussed that yet. I could tell him about Fernando's dream (that would thrill a man of neuroscience). And then there was my ridiculous sense that my life was over which was a conversation for another day.

The real reason I was feeling pissy was so incredibly banal.

I have been spending pointless and extremely demoralizing hours trying to penetrate the labyrinth of paperwork required to register as a consultant for the Canadian government’s foreign aid program.

Nobody other than another middle age woman quite understands how humiliating it can be to try to get hired for anything when you have been out of the work force for a good long time.

Some government bitch told me, though, actually told me straight to my face, that my application for contract work was a non-starter. Not only had I been out of the world of international development a very long time (living in the developing world apparently carries little weight), but I don’t speak French. This is Canada, eh? No bilingualism, no government contract.

She didn’t come right out and say anything about my age, which if I was being really honest, I felt was the real reason I was being shut out. And I couldn’t march straight to...well...to someone higher up than her and lodge a complaint about ageism. (I probably would have had to do so in French anyway.) My lack of bilingualism was a much easier excuse to get me out of her office than telling me I am too old to be hired.

So my frustration and general self-loathing has now moved up a notch to include feeling downright stupid. My entire life I have been dealing with my inability to learn a foreign language. Deborah’s easy facility with languages did not come from me.

TBM could pick up a language as easily as a hooker.

I was too mortified to even begin to open this can of worms with Dr. Larry.

"Joelly, our time is up."

"I just got here!"

"'Here' is a relative concept. You have been somewhere else the entire time. Did you even realize that?"

"Pass the tissue please," I sniffed.

I exited his office in search of the ladies room, quoting my favourite literary heroine in my head to cheer me up: "Tomorrow is another day."

Then, I thought, oh screw Scarlett O’Hara. I'd rather be three sheets than gone with the wind, because frankly, I really and truly don’t give a damn right now.