Broken Shoelaces

I first heard about broken shoelaces in twelve step meetings. Somebody said you may be brilliant at handling disasters and illness and loss and you may keep soldiering on, and then your shoelace breaks and you totally lose it.

Like poor Barbie, in the photo. She knew she’d had too many Martinis but never expected to lose one of her stilettos.

It’s always the things you don’t brace yourself for.

I can clearly recall a hot August afternoon in 2005. I was working as a director of an outreach program which was structured like an amorphous floating blob while also attending graduate school full-time and preparing to complete an MSW thesis. I’d taken a week off to regroup and had dreamt nightly that the agency was being held hostage underwater, not totally surprising since Hurricane Katrina had broken through the levees days earlier.

During my first week back, I lost three of my five staff workers, one of whom was led out in handcuffs due to a parole violation. A second employee disappeared after arguing incessantly with the substance abuse counselor, who then relapsed on drugs and also vanished. I was left with two case managers, an upcoming audit, and 27 new Peer Educators in need of training.

Every day I woke up wondering how to get through another one, drove to work blasting rap music, the harder and angrier the words, the more soothing it felt. At least they weren’t my words. I hated the job, and I hated my supervisor. When I told her how stressed I felt she recommended bubble baths. One morning, I set a single goal for myself—to clear off my desk, which was buried under files and papers and packets of ketchup and mustard and random cookie crumbs. If I could just clean my desk, it would be okay.

But I never reached my desk. A client named Raquel was sitting in the corner of the lobby. We escorted her in, and her scars raced across her arms as frantically as her words spilled from her lips. She had sewn some of the open wounds with a needle and thread to close them. Her husband traps her inside the house, especially when she hears voices, she told us. But don’t tell him about the voices, she warns. He’ll say I’m crazy, like my mother. Abruptly, she stood up and left, promising to return. When I go outside to check on her, she’s screaming into a pay phone at someone, but she acknowledges me and vows to return the following day with Joey, the husband, who I assumed was on the other end.

To sum it up, my crisis coordinator was in crisis, my drug counselor was using drugs, the contract manager had emailed an inspection date, I had a new client I didn’t know if I could help, and my supervisor recommended bubble baths. Not to mention my graduate school workload, which included completion of a thesis, which I’d yet to start. But still, if only I could clean off my desk, I thought, it would be a good beginning. I sat down at the desk. And then…I spilled my iced coffee all over Raquel’s file.

That did it. That was the broken shoelace. As I left for the day, I realized that I’d at least I’d found my thesis topic—burnout.

I’m running into a lot of broken shoelaces of late. I’ve written about my upcoming knee replacement surgery and my difficulty walking and my general terror regarding the entire situation. But what sends me over the edge is not the big picture.

It’s ordering a chair to be delivered by Fedex and given a delivery time on a daily basis but no delivery and trying to call and being denied access to a human being as I scream into the phone “CUSTOMER SERVICE! CUSTOMER SERVICE!” I once saw a cartoon of a baby in diapers yelling into a telephone “REPRESENTATIVE!” That would have been me.

It's following the doctor’s instructions to order a supplement and looking at the invoice and finding they have not only screwed up my address but inserted the doctor’s name instead of mine, and after them promising to correct the situation receiving an email that they’d shipped it out. To the wrong name and address, via Fedex, of course.

It’s panicking when I can’t find things. Panicking over my cane, which I don’t want to admit I need, which I hate, but I freaking when I can’t find it. Panicking over eyeglasses and keys and the television remote and my phone. Especially my phone.

It’s going out and finding my car dead and, despite the common belief that if you’re in Manhattan you don’t need a car, let me tell you that if you live where I live, 5 blocks uphill from the bus stop and 10 from the subway (and I can’t walk stairs anyway) you might. And not only is the car dead but my mechanic of 20 years, Jerome, has closed Ludlow Garage and even with AAA I don’t know where to tow it to and I can’t climb up on a tow truck or get back from wherever we go and I can’t buy food and I can’t go to the library and this is the broken shoelace which breaks me down. I call my son, Louie, and he solves the problem. An internal light was accidentally switched on, apparently, so a jump and a charge at Auto Zone and a trip to Whole Foods and now I have a car and food, at least, if not the library books. When I drive over to get them later that day, my car is blocked in when I return to it. By a FEDEX truck, naturally.

But the immediate problem had been resolved, and it was not the biggest problem. It was the problem I couldn’t cope with, it was the “I can’t go on” problem, it was the broken shoelace.

It was the thing I hadn’t braced myself for.