Self-Help (Part One)

One of the neat things about having PSWs visit twice a day is that I get to people-watch from the comfort of my own bed.

This usually gives me immense pleasure and satisfaction. I love glimpsing into worlds that aren’t my own, even if—especially if?—that other world is as boring as mine is. Please do tell me about your kid’s soccer game! How cold is it today? I want to know. The more mundane the facts, the better!

I’m also fine with the more businesslike approach. A job is, after all, a job. Feel like changing my adult brief without chitchatting? I respect that.

I’ll preface what follows by saying that most of my PSWs are amazing. Maintaining the correct amount of professionalism while making small talk and helping clients with personal care can’t be easy, and I appreciate how well almost all the support workers who come in and out of my apartment perform their role.

Occasionally, however, I’m blindsided.

As you can probably guess, I’m about to tell you about one of those occasions. Well, about several occasions, all involving the same PSW, whom I’ll call … PSW X, both to preserve her anonymity and because it makes her sound like an evil villain from a lesser-known Marvel universe that I’m slowly populating with characters that I invent while trying to distract myself (ask me about Doily Man and/or Sea Monkey).

But I digress!

PSW X was mildly inappropriate from the get-go, though in a way I could initially write off as “quirky.” Her first visit, she told me that she has few female friends, informing me that most women are a word that starts with “B.” She then proposed that we might establish a “real world” bond. Noticing the tall stack of books on my bedside table, she said that she’d bring me something to read the following week. It was, she explained, by the judge on Divorce Court, and PSW X had found it eye-opening.

I figured I’d say nothing and hope that she’d forget. Based on a few other things she’d revealed in our first fifteen minutes together, it had become clear to me that giving a guarded, silent smile rather than politely declining would be the safer road to take. Stay silent I did.

And so she came the next week touting the book, which she had encased in a Ziplock bag. A self-help book for people in unhealthy relationships that they want to get out of. Weird on many levels, and it only got weirder.

I’ll end with that cliffhanger. To be continued …