Juxtapose

Today has been quite a day. It was my last day working the desk at the chiropractor's. I'm sure that doesn't sound like much of a big deal, but to me it really is. I complain a lot about crazy office stuff and crazy coworkers and crazy patients, but I've been working there for four years now, and despite all its quirks, it's probably the most familiar place to me besides home, church, and Yia's house. I know almost every patient by name (which is no small feat, knowing my memory problems), I know how to do anything my job might require me to do, and I am in command of my environment there. Through working as office manager, I've learned how insurance companies work and how to hassle them for their many late payments. I've learned how to multi task in front of a roomful of people while making it look like I ALWAYS answer three phone lines, explain billing to people who speak mostly Portuguese, and schedule appointments all at once. Perhaps most importantly, though, I've learned to talk to people. Even when I started this job, at sixteen, I was still painfully shy and terrified of the thought of answering phones. The first days it was a chore to pick up the phone and a horror to try to flawlessly start up conversations and try to make patients feel welcome. I dreaded going to work behind that desk that automatically placed me as the Go-To Girl for every patient whenever they had a question, complaint, or concern. I now love the way everything about this job is so outside of my element that over time and adaptation all of a sudden all those qualities that I never had before all of a sudden I possess: Organization? Check. Outgoing? Check. Persistent and aggressive when necessary? Check. Patient and compassionate? Check.

So it's been a learning experience. I'm going to miss each and every one of the patients minus three of them, and I'll miss the ease with which I can stride into the office and take over my job with no hesitation and no worries that I might come across a situation I will not be able to handle. So suddenly, it seems, it's becoming all the more clear that my life is progressing, that I'm really going to be a nurse someday, that someday, I may not even be in school anymore. Nevertheless, I'm thankful for this job. It has been a gift from God, and a gift well-used, even amongst my many complaints at times.

However, the primary reason for posting is that I've been thinking all day about something that happened early on in the day when my opera-singing friend came into the office. Without much hemming or hawing at all and surprisingly to the point, he asked it he could take me out to dinner. In my mind, my mouth opened and closed like a fish several times until I figured out what should be the best thing to say. In real time, however, what I said was, "Oh! Oh. You are so sweet. You are just so kind, but I'm only twenty."

It slipped from my tongue in an instant and just as soon after I regretted it. Of course I am twenty, but that's not the point. Of the myriad of reasons I might have given to decline his offer, not the least of which being that I'm already dating someone, this was, I felt, utterly the wrong one entirely. I had done what every girl with a father who taught her, practically from the womb itself, to never be a victim might do; I tried to tactfully and safely back out and offer any possible reason why I wouldn't go out to dinner with a creepy man fifteen or so years my senior.

But then, he wasn't at all creepy and he merited more than a lame one-liner. He's just a sweet, lonely guy trying to meet a nice girl. As so often I find myself, I was, today, the epitome of the Bartender Of Chiropractic. That girl behind the desk who gets to know, in excruciating detail, the life stories of so many griefs, woes, and joys. I am not so fatheaded as to think that everyone deems me worthy of telling everything about themselves, but when in front of me sits a person literally telling me that they have so long been lonely, I can't help but wonder sometimes.

With my ridiculous answer about my age, he immediately apologized and looked incredibly embarrassed, not because he wouldn't ask someone my age out to dinner, but because he obviously thought that I was saying I'd never go out with some old guy. Whether or not it is true that I wouldn't date someone fifteen years older than myself is as of yet unseen, since I've never come across the occasion to decide so before today and will likely never have the occasion again. There is a part of me that is very glad I have a real underlying reason to turn him down because I know, were I not dating M already, I might have felt like I was turning a nice guy down for no reason at all. After a million more apologies, he assured me that he wished me all the best because I was, as he said with all the sincerity in the world, the most beautiful, kind, sweet woman he had ever met. Regardless of my numerous and well-founded doubts about being the most beautiful woman in the world, I only slightly doubt that maybe I have been the kindest, at least in his world. I'm disappointed, really, that what kindness I might have shown will probably be tainted by my poor choice of methods to avoid a date.

I've been around my fair share of lonely bachelors, many of them during times of especially poignant lonely bachelorettehood, but this guy with his tattoos, flannel shirt, quiet spirit, and the weighty compliments, which were the only thing I've ever heard him say that didn't carry some intrinsically apologetic note to them... all these things melted and disarmed me.

I realize there are a lot of tragedies going on in the world these days. I guess there are always lots of tragedies going on, really. It's an age-old thing. Floods and wars and famines go on every waking, breathing day for some people, and I so badly wish I could help in some way. I wait in the wings of being able to help, but am constrained by things I cannot avoid in life yet. But sometimes there are smaller, individual tragedies that I am able to help at the moment.

People tell me all the time at work how kind I am. They say that I'm so good with people and that they can see how much I care about them. Well, all that is true, but they don't see me at home when I put myself first and don't react to my family the way that I should. They don't see me when I'm on the beach in Maine with Sar, whining about the things I can't stand about my church. They don't hear me on the phone with Mark, complaining about Mrs. A being stubborn. They don't know me when I roll my eyes at people, or when I scribble my frustrations out on napkins because if I don't I might actually tell them to someone, or when I'm cursing silently under my breath because the lady that has called five times in a one-hour period is calling, yet again, to discuss with me, at length, how she stubbed her toe and why that toe-stubbing accident has caused her to have a popping jaw and by the way she can't pay her bill at all, so don't even bother asking.

In this way, those people don't know me at all, really. They don't know that I'm selfish, overly concerned with my own comfort, and sometimes easily annoyed by people who complain to me in much the same way I often complain to the people I love very much. All those people see is my smiling face that always, without fail, says, ?Hi, So-and-so! How's it going?? or ?Hey! How're you doing, guys?? and greets them with an expression that shows that I recognize them, that I, in what small capacity I have to do so, really care about them and really do enjoy seeing them walk into my office. All they hear is my voice on the phone, waiting patiently for them to finish their five paragraphs of sentences explaining everything I didn't need to know about why they canceled their appointment. All they know is that I'm the girl who remembers past conversations and inquires about Mrs. Smith's bunion surgery. How did it go? Was it successful? So this means no marathons for at least a month then, right?! Oh-ho! Yes. I am witty.

It's only these little things that people see. And if they see kindness, and sweetness, and gentleness... well, none of those are really mine to portray. If they see anything, all it is is just a little glimpse, a blip, really, in the matrix of my face, a momentary shift which allows a tiny bit of God's mercy to peek through and shine, if only for a moment. That's all it is.