I'm Like a Therapist But I'm Not a Therapist

One of the things that I do in my spare time is walk around town.  This may be known to you by one or two or maybe more of the previous entries within this blog.  It helps me to clear my mind a little bit to not be sitting around home, or being around the people that I see every day.  It’s a little bit of time for me to be on my own.

This past week something happened while I went for a walk.  While I was on one of the local trails, there was a guy walking his dog.  I walked past him in one direction, and caught up to him on the way back down the path.  He was tossing around a Frisbee with his dog just having a good time.  As I was moving on, I did the polite thing and said “Hello.”  That’s when my whole night changed.

This man began to talk to me.  Normally, I’d be fine talking to someone.  Even if I did not know them, I would feel fine talking to this person.  That’s this case.  I don’t know him.  I would normally feel alright discussing things with this guy.  The problem here was that there wasn’t a lot of space for me to add anything into.

The guy that was talking to me began to talk about his recent breakup.  “My wife left me a few months ago and now this dog is the one thing in my life that I love.”  Buzz killed.  My mind can no longer have the clarity that I had wanted it to have.  That was why I went for a walk: to clear my mind.  Pleasant conversation would be fine.  I would remain in the mood that I want to be in.  This bombshell shatters any illusion of peace that I just had.  And there was much more to come.

“She would be mad at me now, you know.  You want to know why?  I used to be a workaholic.  I would work all the time.  And the drive to work is two hours, so I would be gone for fourteen to sixteen hours a day.  I also worked a lot of weekends.  Since she left, I haven’t worked a single weekend.  She would come to my house and murder me if she knew about that.”

Thanks for telling me that, sir.  You’re making me not only feel bad, but you’re giving me information that now makes me think, “I hope she doesn’t actually murder you because then I’ll feel bad for knowing about it before it happens.”  But I don’t say that.  That’s not something you say to someone who seems to be covering up some depression issues with a dog.  He continues on.

“The reason she left me was because I worked so much.  We were on a two week vacation in Mexico when my worked called. ‘We need you to come in.  We’re depending on you,’ they said.  And I went.  This was two days into the vacation.  That was what killed the marriage.”

Why is he telling me all this?  I guess that he needs someone to talk to.  I suck it up and continue to listen, nodding in the right spots.  Sometimes I toss a “Yeah,” or a “That’s pretty bad,” into the conversation.  I’m being polite.  I don’t want to be a huge dick.  But I really don’t want to be there at that moment.  I want to be gone.  I want to be invisible.

“I have two sons.”  I’m learning a lot about this gentleman.  I’m not going to go into details about his sons, but let’s say that I know more about them than I know about some of my university friends.  Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but I know a lot about these children from this guy talking.  I’ve never met his children.  I don’t need to know this much about them upon meeting their father for the first time.  I also don’t need to know about their father’s early life.  But I do.  He told me all of this stuff.

Oh, he also offered me a job.  I don’t think he has the ability to hand me a job, but he tried.  Except that he never gave me any information about the job.  He did keep reiterating that if I wanted a job, I could have one at the company he works for.  I wouldn’t even want the job if he gave me the information.  It’s probably not relevant to my schooling and it would involve either an hour and a half commute, or moving an hour and a half away.  Although the job market is pretty crappy right now, I wouldn’t take this offer seriously, and I already have a job here that I’ll get good hours at in two weeks time.

I think the most I added to the conversation was that I was in university.  When we reached the end of the trail he told me to make my parents proud and get through my schooling.  I went in one direction and he went in the other, not before his parting words.  “I’ll see you around here sometime.  It’s been good talking to you.”

So...what would have been a calming fifteen minute walk now felt like an hour of buzz kill.  Sure, there isn’t much buzz in walking but it can be killed.  I’m glad that I possibly helped this guy feel good for twenty minutes or so.  He had someone to talk to, or talk at.  I’m really glad to have helped with that.  You know, I don’t feel half as bad about it now that I’ve used this to come to terms with it.  I helped someone out.  It felt long at the time but it now feels worth it.

Anyway, that’s what happened to me last week.  Not quite as interesting as the stalker I had last year.  That was weird.  But it seems to be worth the time I took to write about it.