Penny called last night (part four)

After the PO started yelling at me, it felt like I was watching the whole thing from outside.

He was saying something, harshly, but all I could do was just keep tracing the tiles on the floor.

My brain was fizzing out. I felt drained. I felt dizzy too.

It wasn't just that I was scared, like I wanted to run for it. It was a more primitive feeling. Just a sense that my life had ended. There was no point in paying attention any more.

Then I realized what he was saying, what he was actually threatening me with. He wasn't saying he was going to recommend a judge take away my probation.

He was sending me in for a drug test.

That's utterly harmless. I've been clean for two years now. They're not going to find anything.

He said he was going to note in my file how he sent me in for a UA.

At that point I remembered something. During my last appointment here, my real PO, the mean lady, she said she might be going to court soon, so somebody else would be filling in for her.

This idiot was just covering visits. He had about as much power as a substitute teacher on the last day of high school.

I acted contrite. I didn't need to make this guy any angrier at me. I took the sheet of paper and walked over to the place to get tested.

During the walk, I felt like I was in a dream. A minute ago, my immortal soul was disconnecting from this realm. But then it turned out to be a false alarm.

All of this seemed so silly. Why did I have to do all this?

Getting a drug test is another humiliating experience. You gotta wait your turn with the other criminals in another section of the building.

None of that shit is a problem for me. I'm clean. I don't have any drugs in my system.

Sure, it's another big fee I have to pay, which blows away the money earned from about the last week of work, but I'll still be OK.

I sat next to other people waiting. Three of us total. Me, a Mexican guy, and a Black girl. I wondered if they were like me, people that had totally turned their life in a different direction. Or if they were worried that they were fail the test.

I normally would have studied them, looked for clues.

Eventually you get a cup, then go in the restroom.

You pull down your pants and then a cop in surgical gloves borderline molests you, supposedly searching for anything that could be used to cheat the test.

Then you pee while facing a cop, while they watch you intently. fake urine.

It's a shit experience, because the whole time, you're standing there, pants down, just feeling a like fucking low life, while a cop watches you.

I had to spend another hour and a half waiting for that to happen.

During the test, I saw my reflection in the restroom mirror. I looked like a zombie. It matched how I felt.

It was a cold walk and a long wait for the first of two buses to get back home.

Being outside in the weather got me out of that groggy state. It didn't matter why I had to do all this. That's wasted energy. The important thing is that I made it through another visit.

Each one of these gets me closer to the end of this. One day, it will get easier. I've been dealing with this stuff for years now. The system is not going to break me.

While I waited, I repeated to myslf, I'm going to make it out of this.

Eventually I saw the first bus to take back home. It pulled up, the doors opened, I walked up the steps, I dropped my coins into the hopper, and then I looked for a place to sit.

I saw Levi sitting in the back of the bus. Levi, as in Levi, the kid that went to the same church as me when I was younger.

I haven't seen him since high school. That was when I got enough courage to stop pretending that I believed in the bible and all that.

Got enough courage, or maybe the frustration overwhelmed me.

It was after that, after I stopped going to church, I felt like they shunned me. I noticed they would be polite, but not really talk to me.

I had thought that they were going to be friends. After all, we were raised to think of each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

And now they were withdrawing from me.

I didn't hate them for still believing, but I knew I couldn't keep denying that I never felt the feeling they had. I didn't expect them to shun me though. It seemed so contradictory of the faith.

Here's the stuff that led me to losing my faith:

Growing up, at church, people would tell us that in the presence of the holy spirit, we would feel it. They described memories of certain events when they first experienced it.

The adults said it was the most wonderful feeling of belonging and peace and safety.

And I remember one by one all my friends experienced it. I remember once being in a room during a late night prayer service. The lights were off, just candles light, and everyone was singing, and praying, and I remember seeing other kids crying and smiling and singing with their eyes closed.

I felt such intense hatred toward myself in that moment. I was so rotten that Jesus would not enter my heart. That's how I felt at the moment.

I started crying too, but it wasn't the ecstatic happy "everything is beautiful" crying that my friends were having.

It was me feeling like I was trash.

But when I was a little older, I saw it as everyone trying to fit in, and they were all pretending, or maybe even actually experiencing hallucinations brought on by getting so worked up.

It made me sick to remember that younger version of myself, the one that felt he was so defective, and really, it was just that he was too naive to realize it was all a game.

I went from hating myself to feeling disgust and disappointment for all the people that did this. If it tricked me, it tricked other kids too.

I couldn't ignore that feeling. I found myself wanting to insult Christianity any time I could. Point out all the horrible stories in the bible. Or just point out the obvious cruelty and injustice all around this.

When I started getting high soon after that, I remember looking back and realizing that there was a lot in common between those prayer services, and me getting stoned now.

I felt better then. Well, a little better. But it caused a lot of friction between me and my parents too.

So I was shunned by my childhood friends.

I sat down behind the driver, where the seats don't face forward, but instead face the center.

From that spot, I watched Levi.

He sat in the back of the bus, looking out the window.

He looked filthy. Like he hadn't taken a shower or changed his clothes in a week. Old baseball cap, high tops, untied, sweatpants.

I had recognized the kid I knew right away. The kid I knew was a shy kid. I used to play with Levi and his brother almost every day growing up. And we used to go to their house for potluck dinners all the time.

He had some headphones on. I watched him silently singing along with the music.

I was in the middle of a terrible fucking day. I didn't have any slack left.

But here was a kid I grew up with, clearly falling apart.

Why didn't I just sit quietly?

I always felt protective over Levi. He was a few years younger than me.

He's the younger brother of another kid I was friends with.

Levi's family and my family went to the same crazy church. But I lost my faith while he always doubled down.

Even though I don't believe in anything they told us back then, I still felt like Levi is kind of like my brother. I couldn't ignore him. Especially because he looked like he was so obviously struggling.

I asked him where he was going. He said he was just riding the bus.

Levi and I lost touch when I decided I was an atheist. When I decided that religion was just an evil way to control people.

Levi is a few years younger than me.

After a few stops, I walked to a seat near him, across the aisle. I called his name. I had to say "Levi" several times.

He looked right at me, and then I realized he didn't recognize me. I said, "It's Marlowe!" and this is when I knew he was in a bad spot. I could see him struggle to remember me. And then he did.

He told me a lot of stuff.

He said today he was trying to relax, so he buys an all-day bus pass, and rides around town. He said he lives in his house still.

He might go to school soon. He might get a job.

I wondered if he was really high on something. I didn't say anything though. I had a hard time imagining him on drugs. But then I found out. He had been in a psych ward for a while and now he's on a lot of strong antipsychotic drugs, and they have a side effect of making him foggy.

I told him I was sorry he went to the hospital. I said that it must have been rough.

This guy was like a younger brother to me. At that moment, I felt bad for we used to treat him.

Then he said how he went to the hospital because he kept hearing voices tell him to kill himself, and he tried to do it.

I talk sometimes about hearing voices, but for me, I guess the voices aren't audible hallucinations, just my own thoughts expressed in sounds. It doesn't feel like a conscious thing I interact with me.

When I hear voices, it's more like I see a phrase flash on a screen.

But Levi was describing something much worse.

I didn't know what to do or say. I asked him again about where he was staying. I wanted to make sure he wasn't trying to spend the night on the bus.

He'd probably get arrested for trying something like that. Or maybe kicked off the bus at some depot and then he'd been in a part of town he didn't know... I'd hate it if something bad happened to him.

I said I didn't want him to ride the bus and then get stranded somewhere. He said his brother would pick him up.

Once I stopped worrying about his immediate safety, I worried about how he got like this.

He said how he started hearing voices, and at first he thought they were angels and demons. I said, "yeah, like we were taught," and he kept going. He said the angels were loud at first, telling him Levi is a soldier of the lord.

But slowly the angel voices faded and the demon voices were all that was left. They told him he should kill himself.