fifty two.

work

Speaking of calling out into the darkness...
I am still toiling in the same black hole.
This is my 3rd year of working with addicts and their children,and my compassion - oxygen for the deep spaceof addiction/recovery ‘support services' - is running low.

It’s just harder and harder to remain objective, to suspend judgement

or hold out hope because the faces change (and change and change)

but the song remains the same.

Most of the new residents I get are young.
They started using earlier and seem more hardened.

They have fewer real-life skills (cooking, cleaning, self-care, work experience, education),

more past-life damage and less desire to work for some sort of recovery.

One resident told me yesterday that, "Hard work is for stupid people".
Maybe she’s right.

The collective history of the women I work with is overwhelming: long-term use of meth,

crack, cocaine, heroin, methadone, alcohol, pot and prescription drugs,

lengthy criminal histories, numerous children, repeated entry into rehab centers,

jail or prison and little to no family support.

When they were still using, they made (and wasted) more money than I will ever see.

Sober life (which includes facing and paying for their criminal pasts, getting a 'real' job

and avoiding drug dealing/prostitution/theft) dictates that they will live

below the poverty line for years before they ever begin to experience basic economic stability. Even if they are successful in their recovery efforts (current success rate - 1 in 6),
limited funding for basic mental health care ensures that they will always struggle
with the issues that brought them to their addictions in the first place.
Maybe I am stupid people to continue working

toward changes that can barelybe attained and likely won’t be sustained….

It’s been 6 months since I drew the black cloth across this mirror,
six months since my best reader took his leave,
moving on to a place where all that can ever be written has long been known.
And though it wasn’t entirely that loss which stopped my writing,
it is thoughts of him that move me to write again.
I heard an owl late last night, calling out into the darkness again and again.
Low and mournful, yet steadily.
No answer came, but the call continued until I fell asleep.
I woke up thinking about my friend; how he might hear the voice of that owl
and come up with a tale about destiny or faith, how he might connect all the tiny dots
between fact and fantasy to create a story full of meaning and enlightenment.
And I guess that's what I keep struggling to accept - that life is basically about each of us
making the daily effort to connect those dots, no matter how fragile,
reaching for enlightenment by creating our own meaning.
Calling out into the darkness whether an answer comes or not.