The Party

Went to a big send-off party last night--some old friends from the peace group I used to work for are leaving the organization after 19 and 16 years, respectively, uprooting themselves and their two kids, and moving across the world to Australia (I felt it my duty to inform them that the water in their Southern-Hemispheric toilet bowls would not be flushing in the other direction. They seemed nonplussed.)

I was pretty anxious all day before going to the party--the prospect of seeing a bunch of people I used to work with at the organization (hereafter, sometimes referred to as “the org”) was actually kind of terrifying for me going into it. There were, of course, certain people I was excited to see, not least of whom the couple-of-honor themselves. I worked at the org for nearly five years, and left nearly five years ago. In that time, I’ve made a lot of great friends through it, and there were people I was really looking forward to seeing who I hadn’t in three, four, or even five years. But I was anxious about the party nonetheless. In order of least- to most-concerning tension-producing mental wanderings:

• I was anxious to mingle with people who are still “in the movement” and/or are still doing some kind of productive, meaningful nonprofit work, while I make my way in the world shuffling paper around on a desk. I fear judgment from people for one, but probably, actually, I fear the judgment I make on myself about this the most. In general, I’m at peace with what I do, because it affords me the free emotional space to do with my non-working hours what I want to do--play, write, read, spend time with friends and family, and raise a bit of hell from time to time. So, I’m not constantly judging myself, but it’s a dynamic in my life I think about quite a lot. Another aspect of this fear about reconciling what I do is that, pretty much, I’ve allowed the negative experiences I had with the organization--the countless uncompensated overtime hours, the stress, the thankless nature of the work, the low pay, the too-much-responsibility-all-the-time--figure too heavily in my decisions about what type of work I’m willing to do in my life even now, five years later. My dread about the work has really paralyzed me in my searches for job and career over the years. I’m beginning to let go of that fear, but it’s still present.

• More concerning was my harboring of the notion that “everyone I used to work with at the org knows what an utter flake I am,” and that they would, undoubtedly, give me a cool reception at the party. I kept picturing moments over the course of my career at the org in which I proved, again and again, that this was true--”I never recruited enough staff members, I never raised enough money, I flaked on my monthly reports on the development of women leaders in the organization, I ran a mediocre electoral campaign”--on and on in my head. I was feeling so nervous about seeing a bunch of people I used to be accountable to in the organization, and people who used to count on my leadership who probably remembered me as a big ol’ fraud. Yikes, can’t you feel the anxiety welling up?

• The deepest fear I had going to this party was that it would trigger an old pattern of social paranoia/anxiety I used to get a lot during my early years working for the organization. This requires quite a lot of background, ‘cause I haven’t written about it in the blog before, but I’ll keep it brief as I can.

I started working for the org in July of 1994, one week after I graduated from college. Just three months before, in April of that year, my girlfriend at the time had moved into my apartment, despite the fact that I was needing more space in the relationship and, surprise, not communicating it.

The night she moved in, we did acid with a group of friends (you see where this is going, right?), some of whom I had reason not to be terribly comfortable with, as they were all constantly immersed in their own little world of college-aged melodrama. So, hampered by my emotional wranglings of the day--living with a girlfriend I needed space from, about to graduate college not knowing what the fuck I was gonna do with my life, and in the company of people who creeped me out--I tripped long and hard and bad. I kept floating in and out of consciousness, unable to keep up with the conversation in the group, and feeling like I was the punch line of a joke I didn’t understand. I was completely disoriented and scared shitless. I tried to walk the three blocks back to my apartment from my friends’ place, but the bright street lights blurred in my vision, and the cars sounded like they were on top of me, and I knew it wasn’t safe for me to go--so I had to stay there with them, cowering in a corner, waiting for the night to be over. For the next several years, I had bouts of intense social anxiety that took me right back into that bad trip--so bad that I couldn’t go to parties, and I couldn’t even be around more than about three other people at any time without freaking out, running into my room, and crying til my eyes burned for two solid years.

So this was the emotional state I was in when I started at the org. And if any of you out there have done social change organizing, you probably know that this type of work is very people-oriented (thus, the ‘social’ in ‘social change’). Constant meetings, briefings, discussions, and retreats. Constant peer review and feedback and debriefing and obligatory bar nights to get to know your co-workers. I managed to do fairly well with the structured setting of meetings, but I had a couple of my “freak outs” at org events and at parties with my co-workers.

So anyway, to make a very, very long story short, it’s been almost ten years since the bad trip, and I’ve had enough therapy and time and perspective on all of it that I’ve, for the most part, put it behind me. But the anticipation leading up to a party tends to get me a bit anxious still. I’d say, if my level of anxiety leading up to parties in 1994-1996 was in the 8-10 range on a scale from one (not too anxious) to ten (freaked the fuck out--sweating, stomach aches, and wishing I were dead), my level of anxiety these days is usually 1 or 2, and very rarely, 3. Saturday night, before the send-off party, it peaked at about 5, probably the most anxious I’ve felt about being social in a good couple years.

And, of course, as if to prove how very fleeting the emotion anxiety, in its nature, is, I ended up having a blast at the party. Anticlimactic, huh? Saw almost everyone I was excited to see, had some good conversations with the happy Australia-bound couple, marveled at how much their kids had grown, had great catch-ups with everyone, and found out that some old friends who I love had gotten married this summer. I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

A couple of highlights: Despite my obsession that everyone there would remember me as a flake, a number of people let me know that they’d really liked working with me, or had been inspired by me, and a current staff member, who had started in the Santa Cruz office after I’d left, rattled off to me, totally unprovoked, how many all-time records the Santa Cruz office had set for the organization in 1998, when I had been the assistant director and then, the director of the office, including the highest level of membership recruitment, the most contributions over $100.00, and the highest average of constituent letters to members of Congress on our issue campaigns. I must say, it was a blushy moment, but I kinda needed the strokes.

Also, I finally met a woman who had worked at the org and left just around the time I had started, who I’d heard about for years through mutual friends. She’d heard about me over the years, too, and we ended up having a really nice conversation and exchanging blog URLs. Don’t know if we’ll hang out in the future, but I imagine our paths will cross again--I like her; she’s got the good energy.

One of the things that she ended up telling me, though, was that a former co-worker, I’ll call her Vivienne, one of my first trainers in the organization, actually, had killed herself this year. That was clearly not the news I was expecting, but I’m sort of glad that I know, at least. She brought this person up in the conversation before she told me the news, and I kind of went off on a bit of a tangent about her--”Yeah,” I said, “she and I were housemates for a short time, which was probably not the best idea...” then she told me about Vivienne’s suicide, and the memorial service, and I felt, momentarily, like an ass. Vivienne had been pretty hard to get along with and kind of volatile. There were things I liked about her, too, though--she was a spitfire, a load of fun, a great canvasser and field manager, and I had a soft spot for her, ‘cause she was one of the first queer co-workers I got to know at the org. And since we’d lived together for a few months, we definitely knew each other pretty well for a time there, and had a place in each other’s lives, even if it was eight or nine years ago.

But I also know that, at least for a time, Vivienne held a bit of a grudge against me. In the conversation at the party, I told this story as well: there was a time that Vivienne had been running a canvass crew in Santa Cruz, and another co-worker and I, a woman I was beginning to have an affair with (another very long story) completely flaked, and went to screw around on the beach instead of canvassing, neither of us raising a cent that night. I remember it as a funny story, especially with the years of distance from it. We flake, and we go back to the crew car at the end of the night, and Vivienne gets out of the car and asks us how our nights went. And we both just stand there, looking her dead in the eye, and say, “Sorry, we flaked.” And Vivienne, who was all about success and running a tight ship and raking in as much bonus money as possible, is completely and utterly aghast. She asks us if we raised any money at all. We said nope. We were totally unrepentant. So Vivienne just says to us, with a shrug, “Get in the car.” The next day, I was set to come in early for a training session with the State Canvass Director, part of my training to become a field manager--how to hold your crew accountable. Instead of training me, he ripped me a new one for the better part of an hour, and I totally and completely deserved it, and actually thanked him for it at the end--it was exactly what needed to happen. Here I was, about to learn how to hold somebody accountable for their work, when I’m off fucking around--with a co-worker--on the beach. One to grow on, as they say. But the thing is, Vivienne quit the organization very shortly after this incident, and she cited it as one of the reasons she was fed-up and burned out. I didn't take it on, 'cause I knew that Vivienne had a yen for the drama, but for the life of me, I do not remember whether I ever even apologized to her for that.

So Vivienne--wherever you are in this universe--please know that I’m sorry for that night I flaked on your crew. Please know it was an important night in my life, in my development as an activist, and in my emotional life, and that I learned from it. Please know that I’m thinking of you, I’m concentrating on you, on your loved ones, your family, the people who really cared about you throughout your life. I wish you peace, and I wish for all your loved ones to feel peace and healing from your death. R.I.P. Vivienne. I hope in death you are as powerful as you were in life.

Peace,

Bree

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