And there’s a round 2

Lesson: Never pass up a second chance.

 
Two months after my interview at the Youth Academy for troubled teens I got a call back.  It was the call I had been waiting for and when it finally arrived, I was confused.  I didn’t know what to do.  Did I REALLY want the job?  Was I REALLY going to quite?  I started to weigh the pros and cons.  I thought they were calling to offer me the position, but when I finally thought of the right words and called back the following morning, they just wanted a second interview.  Second best. 
 
I made an excuse and on Monday morning I slept in for an extra hour and then made my way half a block up the street from my house for the meeting.  This time I decided against wearing a full suit since this place doesn’t really seem like a shirt and tie kind of place.  Most everyone there is dressed like they’re making a weekend run to the grocery store.  So I wore my nicest gray slacks with perfect creases down the middle and a blue button up shirt and was happy with my choice when I got there. 
 
Nothing about this job is going to be easy.  I met the "Team Leader" which was a sure-fire sign that there is a future in this job, a huge plus for me.  She over looks all the groups of kids and told me tons of horror stories, to scare me I think.  They need constant supervision.  A girl pierced her eyebrow in the bathroom once… girls have snuck into the showers together…. they’re not allowed to have shoes or bags with them to help prevent them from running away.  They are to wear slippers or flip flops, but a boy still ran away 2 weeks ago, she said, and he was gone for 3 days. 
 
I know that this is going to be hard, but the only place success comes before work is the dictionary.  Just because it’s not going to be easy is not a good excuse not to do it, that’s the lazy excuse.  I think I will be fine if I can learn to leave work at work.  It’s such a sad situation and it’s easy to let the bad thoughts stay with you.  Two of the kids have no home at all, no parents, aunts, uncles, no one, many of them have been sexually abused and are not allowed to go home on weekend visits because their home is unstable.  So what will they do??  I can only imagine how hard it is to encourage someone to straighten up their life when they feel they have nothing to live for.  I wonder if you’re allowed to teach them about God?  Probably not but I think a lot of them could use Him in their lives. 
 
It reminds me a lot of myself.
 
I wonder how these kids got in this situation in the first place.  I guess for me it was a very different because I was given several chances to "straighten up" and some how, some way, one day the lights just turned on inside my head and I thought, "I don’t want this life anymore."  I was always into drugs.  From the first moment they were presented in front of me, I always wanted to get high and be high.  I was never scared.  My first time smoking cigarettes in the 4th grade–I never had a doubt or a second thought.  Beginning 9th grade, getting high was a daily thing–in the morning before school, during lunch, in between classes, after school–every day.  A day wasn’t normal without smoking a blunt of a few bowls.  Looking back on it, it’s like a huge part of my life that was wasted, literally.  I don’t have many fond high school memories that don’t have to do with skipping school and getting fucked up in the middle of the day.  I was just like these kids.  No one could get through to me and no one even tried.  My parents knew what I was doing, I was caught with bowls, blunts, grahams, condoms, liquor many, many times.  Every time I got a slap on the wrist and went about my ways.  The summer I tripped on a lot of mushrooms was probably my peak.  I think I was going into my senior year and it seemed like they were everywhere, everyone was doing it, and my boyfriend was selling the best of it.  That was a fun time.  We would eat them with a spoon full of peanut butter.  I ate them plain a few times but it tasted like ass.  I had a few bad, crazy trips.  Trips that made me feel like I was dying and I got really scared, but I was normal again when it wore off.  I miss my smoking/drug buddies when I think about those times.  Time only tells how good a friend really is, and seeing how I don’t talk to any of them now says a lot, but damn… those were some of the best friends I ever had, to this day.  The kind of friends that would do anything for you, always be there for you no matter what, always look out for you and never leave you behind.  It was an unique relationship.  Then when I moved away and then stopped doing drugs, they were all gone and many of them I haven’t seen since.  Times change.
 
But that is why I feel connected to this job, because this could have been my life.  I could have been sent away from home like them.  It was the hardest time of my life and I blame that completely on the drugs and my boyfriend at the time, but that’s for another entry.  I’d like to help these kids, mentor them, at least try to get through to them.  It could be the most important thing I ever do.
 
Anyways, it’s pretty pointless to write about this since they haven’t called. </div