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I have a terrible sense of direction.
At 14, I was on a rabbit hunt. Rabbit hunts mostly consist of alternately charging through briar patches to get to where the dogs have “jumped” the rabbit and waiting for the rabbit to come back. The Lord God programmed rabbits to make large circles when being chased. I was sitting in a dirt road during what must’ve been an epic circle. While the other hunters had some concept of where they were, I did not. I sat there until Dad came and got me.
At 16, I had my first vehicle and no smartphone. As a regular companion and navigator, I had my best friend whose total lack of spatial awareness rivaled my own. I recall making our way home from youth group and passing a sign welcoming us to a neighboring state.
At 17, this friend and I went turkey hunting on a property he’d only visited a few times. The hunt was fine until it was time to find the truck. We walked for miles, many miles. We called people with smartphones, tried to describe landmarks and road names. We toted our shotguns down a busy highway and tried not to look malicious, just hopelessly lost.
At 19, I lived in rural Oregon. Still pre-smartphone, there was a Tom-Tom GPS in my car. That thing was very hit or miss. I recall one dark night driving over a railroad track miles from home and thinking, “I have absolutely no idea where I am.” This happened quite often. In a letter to a friend at the time I remarked that I was finding that being lost was something I was getting better at. I had little choice in getting lost, but there was an art to being lost. After it happens so many times, I wrote, you begin to feel a peace with it, an acceptance. Hmm, yep, I see that I’m lost again. This is familiar.
At 20, I was living back in my hometown, doing community college and working as a barista. I had no idea how to do either. I remember calling the cafe from my car one morning to explain I would be late for my shift. I’d taken a wrong turn on the route I drove almost everyday.
At 23, we moved to Phoenix. By this time I had Google Maps in my hand. Phoenix is just a grid of straight line streets, butI still managed to miss a lot of turns. Before I started my job, Aleisha drove me to the building, gently explaining where to enter and exit the freeway to get to work.
I think all of this is why I chose psychotherapy as a job. It means daily appointments with folks who are, in some way, lost. And it is not my job to give them directions – thank God. I get paid to be lost with them for an hour. You tell the doctor your issues, and she says, “Yep, it’s your left ventricular cartaroid seizing up.” Here’s what it does, here’s why it ain’t working, and here’s how we fix it. You tell a therapist your issues, and they say, “Hmm, yep, you seem lost.” See, I can do that! I have years of experience and a graduate degree in being lost. It took me until my senior year of college to decide on this profession, but in retrospect, taking a while to find the path seems a bit fitting.
We’ve just moved to Savannah, GA. I don’t know where anything is in Savannah, GA. And as I drive across the city, making large winding circles like a hunted rabbit, some may think I’m wasting time, wasting gas. I prefer to think of it as honing my craft.
javen.bear. 