Ergh...

In the why can't they leave well enough alone division....L has been moved to a jail about an hour from here. I found this out via the grapevine from the ex-roomate who found it out from L's girlfriend when she went to visit on Tuesday. I have no further details at this point, but will be working on that today when my old friend the jail administrator comes in at 3:30. You may recall we went through this the last time when he kept disappearing and reappearing in the jail up north and then this one again, seemingly at whim. I'd go to visit and he'd be gone. Then I'd drive to where he was and poof, he's not there, but here again! He never did know what that was all about. You apparently get moved for all kinds of reasons when you are in jail, some about you and some not. He says they just come and say, "Get your stuff, you are going for a ride." Shudder. So the cards people have been sending--I have no idea if they forward them. It's his birthday today and I know there were some on the way. I plan to ask Sgt. E just where those are and if they will get to him....sometime, but surely not today. On his birthday he will sit alone, an hour away and think, again, that no one remembers or cares. Because I cannot make visiting hours and the girlfriend has no transportation, even if we could get ourselves approved as visitors there on this short notice. Every place is different. The last time I was able to talk myself in by name dropping because I had also been a therapist in the same town and "knew people." In the hour away place nobody knows my name...so I'm guessing I'll have to go through the full approval drill as a new professional and meet muster. Have to make that call today too. Because hour or no, I am going!

So we moved his stuff out of his apartment last night. It's all safe and sound in storage. I saw his baptismal candle and the prayer book we gave him. His cross and his cards. They were all together in a drawer, safe and sound. When his room mate saw me packing them he made some flip remark about if L had taken his church more seriously he wouldn't be in this mess. I did not say the things I thought. They were pretty rude. I simply said that it was between L and God and not ours to judge that. I know S is very angry at L. He feels he betrayed him and let him down. He doesn't get all of the tangled parts of L's life. He is only twenty-something himself and is dealing with his own issues. He only knows he liked L, trusted him and thought he had a room mate he would be with for a while, and now he does not. He blames L for his own discomfort and he is sharing that very freely with me in frequent phone calls and voice mails. S is getting a new room mate now. I hope that will help in his struggles.

It's funny. L thinks he is such an insignificant nobody, a loner, an eagle who soars high above us, touching no one, just swooping in now and then when he needs to take something to survive (he has described himself to me this way). And yet, and yet....my heart hurts over him, room mate S is struggling with his absence, the CH staff still asks about him, his new girlfriend D is having a hard time and misses him, his congregation worries and cares about him, you are all praying for him and folks who have never met him are sending cards to him. I hope someday he is in a place that he can hear and know this about himself. That he does matter, that he does count, that we do care. For now I simply hope that the system lets him be in one place long enough that the mail comes.