Another diary entry.

For as many stories of self destruction as I've heard recently, I still feel too bright and shiny to write a bukowski-wanna-be piece of crap. Especially right now, sitting in a coffee shop across from you know who. I just feel too giddy.
I work at a recovery and rehabilitation center. We've got recovering alcoholics, crack addicts, heroin addicts, schizophrenics, 60 year old men with dementia only now starting their lives over who unfortunately no longer remember how to spell their own names, men with liver disease and aids, victims of sexual abuse... we've got sexual abusers too, men who can't keep their hands to themselves, ex-prisoners and severely depressed people with suicidal or homicidal thoughts. do you have a plan? do you know how you are going to do it? do you have a target? and here i am, a twenty-three year old woman with big brown eyes and real compassion, trying to draw my lines where they need to be drawn, telling old men it's not okay to touch my shoulder and give me awkward compliments when we're in the room alone with each other. I need to be a parent to men twice or three times my senior, show them how to wash their hands to the tune of the birthday song, sit them down in an ugly white conference room with xeroxed handouts that explain how to create a budget. Me, the one who spent 2,000 dollars my freshman year of college on snacks and other things in the first few months.
The more I have to take care of people and help them along, the more I feel like the other workers who've been pushing me along and teaching me-- a responsible person -- something I've never considered myself to be. The more I work the less I feel like someone who needs to be taken care of, like someone knee deep in the muck of their own mistakes. But off the clock I'm still a hell of a girl. I still drink. I still want to travel. I still want my life to be anything but normal.
This is my 23rd year of life.

Except for the job, occasionally scraping ice off car windows, and a change in everyday clothing, I came to alaska to lead the same life i always have. I drink on the weekends and I care about what other people think, and I'm less than punctual and a little lazier than your average jane. Maybe it's alaska that suits me so well. Like santa cruz did-- a coat that fits. But anyways I like it. I like the scenery. Contrary to how it may seem in that past paragraph, I love my job and all the people wrapped up in that little maze. All those beautiful cognitively disabled jacks n jills. it reminds me of the santa cruz dorms.

While I haven't been writing a whole lot, I've gotten the chance to do some writing at work and have gotten some good feedback. I'm actually quite proud of myself. At any rate, I'll have my first published article up on the national website this March. Looking forward to forcing you all to read it.

-me