Everyday, i try to board the Q train so i can get a seat. i can take the express train but then i have to change at Atlantic Ave and its packed with city and court workers and wall streeters. So i sit every morning with the mothers taking their kids to school, the foreigners reading foreign papers and me with my IPOD and Newspaper. I change at 14th street.
When i am training, i am about 15 minutes ahead of myself. That has been for 30 days of the 6 months that i have worked at the Academy. Last Thursday, was a day like any other day, except i had my glasses on because my eyes were tired from school and trying to read, and trying to work on ITUNES til after midnight.
As i walked through the train station, i spot a familiar woman. A woman who i know who bent over to kiss me. We exchanged pleasantries. a quick catch up. What has happened since we ran into each other last time. For me, I change in jobs, because i lost my job and now a trainer at the ACS Academy. A summer of Maturnity leave..."where are the pictures of the children she asks?" A maturnity leave that fruited no children. A second career training CPS workers. She asks me if its "a good fit" i think it is. She tells me she got married a month ago. To a man or woman, I ask. She says a man. The man that i saw her with the last time i saw her. She is still in the same job and living in Peekskill. I hand her my work number and tell her my home number has changed. She repeats the phrase "its been a wild ride" that i said earlier in the conversation. She repeats it again.
I run into a colleague who i am fond of and i tell her of my chance meeting. A meeting with someone who was an important student or protege. Someone who i nurtured, trained, understood, loved like a child or as close to any child that i would give birth to. A woman who needed to be nurtured and needed parenting and i needed to parent. I needed to transmit my knowledge to someone. We worked together, we cried about clients, she tested my limits as a supervisor. She didnt want the disapproval but got it with love for the first time. She could complete my sentences and knew my clinical sense. She respected and needed me.
I know that i was the one who needed to change the relationship and i resented it when she could not be there for me when i needed someone, anyone, a friend the most. I expected her to be able to change roles and thought that there was a mutual friendship in this complicated relationship. It really was more complicated than that. It was a parent child relationship. Mentor-Mentee, Big sister, little sister but what it wasnt, it was not a friendship- it was not to be in the reverse. I could not depend. i could not ask for having my needs met, other than the needs i was receiving from being the teacher not student. when i needed more than she could give, or was used to giving.... i was angry and hurt and she was confused.
I am not sure that we can reconnect or be friends. we are not mutual friends. we will not be friends
