I don't mean this so much as a review/advertisement ffor Valentine's Day, though I might have a lot to say about it. Mainly what I'm writing about is a terrific conversation I had tonight on the bus with someone I had never met and probably will never see again, but would really like to. I was at the busstop and she asked if I was waiting for the 71 bus and I said "yes" and she said, "Oh, good." So, People, if you want to know how to start a conversation with someone at the busstop, that is a polite way of doing it. I asked if she was going to the college and she said, "Yeah, I'm with the college." I asked, "As a worker or as a student." and she said she was in the first year of getting her degree. I said the looked older than twenty-one, which seemed to offend her slightly, but it didn't shut her down and she said she was going back for her secondd degree. Her first one was in communications and this one is in radiology. I said that seemed great because with expertise in both fields if someone comes in to the lab and isn't making a lot of sense she can use her background in communications to try to figure it out and not just assume stuff. She said the other application is if someone thinks they have psychiatric issues, but actually they've got a skull fracture. The conversation already seemed positive enough that I began to ask her about people around here I could see if I suffered blows to the head around the same time as I had changes in my psychiatric history, but mainly we were just having a conversation and I told her my current md is really great and would assuredly help me get tests if I asked him for them. So then she began to ask me what my diagnosis is just for her own education and I told her in this case I'd be happy to tell her. Then we got on the bus and her bus pass was out of date and I almost offered to pay for her ride because it was kind of an important conversation all of a sudden. We sat down and she asked me what triggers my illness. I complimented her on asking exactly the right question and I said, "Birth." It was kind of my show for a while because it's hard for any of us to get out of helper/helpee mode once that dynamic has started but what distinguished her was the boldness of her questions and at the same time the empathy. At one point she teased me that the medications I take give me a liquid lobotomy, though I knew she was just flirting, which made me feel comfortable talking about all the most crazy cosmic stuff I could think of. We did a lot of smiling and laughing. I told her my theory that I don't know whether anything is real or not, but that I know I prefer reality over hallucination. She asked, reasonably enough, "What is reality?" and I said, "I have no idea, but I'd like to think I'd know it if I saw it."I told her I'm not that sure she wasn't a hallucination, which she seemed to think was funny. By the time we got to her stop I felt so close to her it didn't seem odd she was clutching my hands and squeezing them and I hers. She said her name was Kim and I said "Kim and Tim." I didn't feel like asking for her phone number unless I run into her a second time (which I certainly hope I do,) but it's nice to connect with someone so strongly on Valentine's Day. Also, tonight was a romantic night, but I could well understand these things are time sensitive and I wouldn't assume I could kiss her hand the next time I see her where if I had done it tonight she probably would have been delighted.
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