Penny called last night (part two)

I forced myself to read my textbook.

I had to stop thinking about where I was. I was getting too worked up. I started remembering bad memories from school. I started feeling like here I was again stuck in some shitty institution.

I skipped back in my textbook and read a section I already understood. It felt good to run through math formulas in my head that I was already familiar with. Like listening to a favorite song, I guess.

It helped. I stopped thinking about the room that I was in and instead escaped into the printed out charts and graphs.

At one point something funny happened. This guy in a suit went up to the window and complained because it was fifteen minutes past his scheduled appointment. He spoke loudly and said something like, "I have things to do today. It's not my problem that this place is so disorganized."

That might work well trying to shame somebody that wants your business, but here, not so much.

I studied the guy at the window. Like I said, he wore a suit. He had the signs of being well to do. I wondered why he was here. Maybe a drunk driving thing. Maybe some white collar thing like tax fraud.

It's gotta be weird for somebody like that to find themselves suddenly in this world. Nothing in their life experience has prepared them for this. The last thing he oughtta do is antagonize these people though.

They could revoke his probation and send him to prison. Or they could just creatively humiliate him. They could show up at his job, and ask all his coworkers about him. They could make him wear an electronic monitoring bracelet.

Corrections people are petty to the extreme. It's not an exaggeration to say they're people that wished they could have been cops, but couldn't make the cut.

Nope, the smart move is to just avoid conflict, keep your head down, and wait it out.

Doing this seems to be easier somehow for people from modest backgrounds. But people like this stockbroker guy at the window... he really doesn't see that how he has zero power now. All his instincts and habits are working against him.

I thought about walking up to him and trying to warn him, but then I heard somebody call my name. It was finally time for my appointment.

Now that I'm writing this stuff out, I just remembered a story I had about a really sadistic PO.

There was a guy at the treatment center at the same time I was. His name was Evander. One time when we were outside on a smoke break, he told me how his PO wanted him to pay him a little extra in cash, like bribes, and Evander didn't do it.

So then, Evander's PO got the sheriff to raid his house, and I guess they found something he wasn't supposed to have while on parole. I don't know if it was a gun or drugs or something else.

They took Evander back to jail, where he would wait for a judge to decide if he should serve the rest of his sentence in prison.

Here's the twisted part: his PO told the jail that Evander was a suicide risk, and so they put him in this special part of the jail where they literally strapped him to a table, in his underwear, for like five days.

Of course Evander was still shooting up, so he went through withdrawal in there. He talked about how he'd throw up or piss himself and they'd just leave him in it for hours, on his back, staring at the ceiling.

I really liked Evander. I hope he's doing OK. He was thirty-something years old, and he said he'd been shooting dope for most of his life.

He knew it was gonna kill him, and he hated it for how much it controlled his life, but couldn't seem to stay off it.

Now I remember how one time he said he believed god just wants him to be happy, but Evander just kept wallowing in shit.

At the time, that idea about god really bugged me.

I wanted to say something like if god didn't want us to be so self-destructive, he should have taken better care of us.

I kept my mouth shut though. I didn't want to get kicked out of the treatment program. I was terrified of going to prison. Still am. But the probability is lower today than it was then.

For me, using drugs wasn't something I had ever tried to stop doing but couldn't.

Instead, the first time I got really drunk, it felt so amazing. It was the first time I felt any sense of peace in my own skin.

I realized that I'd been miserable and running scared my entire life, but I was getting a tiny peek at feeling good.

Getting blasted was fun. Like throwing glass bottles at a brick wall.

I was born into a fucked environment. Escaping with chemicals was just artificial, synthetic happiness, but goddamn, it was the only time I ever felt so good.

If god didn't want me to seek out drugs to feel better, well, he needed to step up his offer.

I tried religion. I tried prayer and studying the bible all the time as a kid. It never fucking worked.

But getting drunk or getting high? Yes, that really worked. Temporarily at least. No existential self-loathing while puking after too much malt liquor.