jamila

The Hopeless: On Working at the Detox

When I worked with these people, I was not afraid of them. I sat in my seat of limited power and controlled their hydration, meting out lukewarm water in little paper cups. I told them to shut the fuck up. I judged and felt secure, the keys to their freedom jangling against my hip, the panic button affixed to my belt. A small comfort, looking back. I realize now that had I needed to press that button, response time would have been too slow to stop them from carving me ear to ear. They would have gotten there in time for clean up, not salvation.

I wrote thesis papers on economics, ethics and American history, my concentration broken frequently by men with pickled livers yelling for me like children, some asking for soup like beggars, others expressing their desire to fuck me. I turned up my music and finished my homework, refusing them an ear. I met the woman whose three children had died, a woman with no hope who was so much stronger than me. I would have put a gun in my mouth. She asked me if she could have a cigarette. And I used my key and let her join me outside, pulling noxious smoke into out lungs together, her pain permeating my space and making me fidget.

I learned to be assertive on the surface, pretending that my heart didn't race when a man with prison tattoos told me he would kill my entire family, including the dog that he imagined i had.

Now, as I walk through their terf, no panic button on my belt, no reassuring jangle of keys to remind me that I was in charge, without even a coat, they terrify me. The desperation and despair that has brought them here has broken them, but my compassion is overruled by fear. I shouldn't be here. I don't belong here, surrounded by people who have lost either the will or the way to take care of themselves.

I'd rather be at the desk, watching them come in and out, knowing that I am nothing like them, even though I am. Knowing that I am better than them, even if it's only better luck that makes me an outsider in their world and them in mine.