The red pen.

Born to bear and read to all
The details of our ending.
To write it down for all the world to see.
But I forgot my pen,

This morning held a write-in. A ritual began and then abandoned as life took over. Chris and Joel and I invaded the diner with our colored pens and printed drafts and ordered breakfast and began to pass around our offerings, their research papers and my short stories. We edit each other's works, when time permits, and there are strict rules in place. We don't critique content, we only work with making sure the spelling, formats, syntax and tenses are watertight, editing-wise, and then the work must be accompanied by a full and complete breakfast (i.e. something hot, Bridget.), followed by at least half a dozen coffee refills.

It's been a long time since the last one but it was nice to be prepared with stories I have managed to put down and print off, surprising myself. Still writing. Still ticking, still going, still trying to create something worth creating.

They will call this my dark period, which is kind of funny, since the stories are not all that dark, just different. Maybe a little deeper. I don't know, really, that's for future critics to decide.

I ate hash browns and bacon until I was stuffed and drank coffee until I was floating on caffeine and I had to really fight both Chris and Joel not to go easy on my errors, not let things slide just to give me a break and I was hard on both of them, especially on Joel's tendency to use his Newfie colloquialisms.

I have a lot of work to do now before the next write-in, which will be moved to Fridays once a month to accommodate my new job, and so for the day, that's all I'm going to write here. See you tomorrow.

On not taking solace in the arms of your shrink.

It always seems to me that when something goes wonderfully, and everyone makes a big effort to Keep Things Nice, something is up.

Something was up.

Joel's disciplinary hearing. It was this morning but no one told me, of course. So I wouldn't worry. The good news was, they didn't revoke his licence. The bad news? They suspended it instead, for two years (three with time served already), then it will be partially reinstated while he practices, supervised, for five years. This after taking a bunch of training courses and ethics workshops and a million other hoops he has to jump through. He is now seriously considering walking away from what would have been an incredibly promising career, had he never met me.

And frankly, I don't care to be called the victim in this. You can say it all you like, I don't care what kind of authority or obligation Joel had to maintain a psychiatrist-patient boundary, the simple fact is I asked him for something and I got it.

And he has to pay the price and I don't quite understand why I don't. I mean, I do, but I don't. I just don't see where he took advantage, when I was the one who made the first step inward.

In any case, he has other options and may or may not return to psychiatry in the future. But more importantly, he is still my friend.

I know, big surprise there. Ben was really hoping things would go the other way.