Sunday Morning

I'm groggily eating breakfast next to the bubbling cat fountain on my table when the phone rings. It's my very anxious jewish trans punk client. He is very close to getting a move in date for his new apartment and the anticipation is making him melt down. On his way out of the shelter today, a guard making small talk asked him if he was coming back. He told her was going to the coffee shop to work on some stuff. But now he is completely convinced that she thought he wasn't coming back and they are going to cancel his bed at the shelter. I explain that even in the unlikely event she thought that, it takes more than a casual remark to a guard to remove yourself from a Safe Haven. His anxiety in overdrive, he can't absorb this, and keeps repeating the story and his fears. I decide to distract him by asking him what he was working on at the coffee shop. Suddenly, like the sun coming out after a storm, the anxiety fell away and he calmly said "Oh! I have an opportunity to submit a proposal for the Harvard Divinity Conference." I haven't had any caffeine yet, and I pause to consider whether I have heard this right. Then I say, "I really wasn't expecting you to say that" and the client and I both start to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

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