unburdened

I sit in the library undercroft at Elizabeth College in Hobart’s west end listening to the two most experienced presenters—our national training manager and our national project officer—give a consummately professional presentation to 50 teachers. I’m here to observe and to present some of the show at Claremont College tomorrow.

As the presentation rolls on I realise that I can’t present tomorrow. I ask to meet the national training manager when we get back to the hotel. I sit opposite her in her room, start by telling her I’m pretty fragile right now. I describe my last six months, everything. When I talk about the support my good woman has given me my voice cracks and I stop for a few seconds to regain composure.

We talk for an hour and I emerge from her room unburdened. I put all the cards on the table: I shirk no responsibility for not doing better, but leave out no circumstance that has compromised my ability to perform well. At the end we get right down to whether I’m the right fit for the job. We’ll see in three months whether or not I continue.

I like our national training manager; she has a name but I won’t compromise the possibility of identifying her here.  She listens, understands, is sympathetic. She understands too my reluctance to seek help even though we preach it as part of good mental health and well-being.

Thus unburdened I wander the streets looking for real milk to put in a cup of tea. There is none in central Hobart just after six on a Thursday evening. But Fullers Bookshop is open and Bob Brown is inside signing copies of a friend’s new book about Frenchmans Cap. I wander in. I’m waiting a phone call from a friend. She calls, meets me in the shop.   

I first met Lea when she was 17 and I was 22 and running a camp for intellectually disabled kids at Anglesea.  She laughed so loud and so often. Who wasn’t going to take notice? Now we’ve known each other nearly 40 years. Seems impossible.

We don’t see each other much: we live in different states after all. She’s been in Tassie so long, built a house on Mount Cygnet, no power, no sewage, just a view right into the heart of the island.

Rock on.