Here's me, just chillin' with my unicorn

Secret Celebrations

...are not so secret when you talk about them on the internet, but I couldn't make it to an AA meeting, so facebook is where I announced my year sobriety. It worked, man, I got the props I needed and a tall post stuck in the sands of the interweb. One year, right? I thought it would be difficult like a battle, but it was more like a breakup. A breakup with a sexy loser that's an acknowledged problem but whom all your friends still like.

Between you and me, blog, today marks yet another milestone. Today we herald a secret victory: the fruit of digging up the past and showing it to light. The triumph of will over trauma, of bravery over shame, my hand exercising dominion over my past. Temper all these words with deep breaths and laid-back calm, because I'm way into yoga. Your garden-variety vanquishment.

This is how things feel now. The brutal, stabby struggles of my first thirty are gone. Lately I'm a sturdy boat gauzed with serenity, just taking it in. It no longer makes sense to say that this job is crazy--yeah, no, I get it. The reason I loathe the martyrs walking this place, pinning their hopes on incarcerated children, isn't just because it violates my code of ethics, but because it makes you a citizen of Creepytown.

You can't rescue people you don't even see.

Maybe they have sonar, or know something I don't. Whatever. I have regular old eyes and hands and a relentlessly critical brain that is getting really good at liking me without having to see me as the center of the entire Universe. It frees up time while making insults easier to take. Oh, if insults were sugary candies, I'd been on my fifth set of dentures.

There's this little Polish dude, 13 going on 63, who is an old-school hustler always trying to cop a hug. He's good for a laugh, as is the slow girl going through coke withdrawal who giggles at the most obscure things--not my best material, but like "You said that funny, you said it with your eyes." I've stopped pretending to change lives and now draw awesome calendars-of-the-month that are also coloring sheets. These are the tiny joys I clutch in my hand as the administrators of this place reveal themselves to be not merely incompetent but actively malevolent.

This building is pulsing with the desire to create the world in our image, and it's gross. Keep this in mind. It's time to start thinking of where I'll go when I move on, and then not be that surprised when I end up altogether somewhere else.