Sunlight and coffee and love

Yesterday was grey, and I spent my day looking down. Down at my boots on the salty concrete, over cigarette butts and spit and billowing chemical smoke that slowed under my wide black hood, turning stale. Agitated, broken, empty young men huddled side by side on a plastic bench spat curses and insults at each other as I stood by, too overwhelmed to continue my peace efforts. I was in over my boots, in way over my head.

They passed the time with porn and sleep and energy drinks and smoke, with nothing better to talk about than the asses of every girl who walked by. They barked in the hallway at passing staff, imitated the more severely brain damaged clients, and asked the girls to sit across from them so they could not-so-subtlety rub themselves in the commons area over conversations about the weather.

That day, I left exactly 8 minutes after I was told to get the f--- out of his room, and the eight minutes of tormented yelling and swearing was almost more than I could bear. The end of my shift and I escaped over the crunchy salt and butts and spit, face stung by the bitter cold and fat sad flakes of snow. Relief did not come with escape. I was free, but he was stuck in there. He couldn't escape from himself. I cried on the way home.

This morning, the dormant dread of this hellish workplace pulsed back to life with the electric shriek of my alarm clock.

I brushed my teeth. I brewed some coffee. I packed my lunch and ate a bowl of steaming oatmeal while reading my favorite cookbook. I drove to work and took the shortcut through the neighborhood and past the park. The open field gave me a glimpse of the perfect orange-blue gradation of the morning sky, promising a sunny day. I thought about all the love I have for the people in my life, and I the love they have for me. The sunshine and coffee and love was starting to thaw the dread.

I was warmed so deep that I saw sparks of life in people, not dying embers. I saw people anguished and in pain, but surrounding each of them, a team of people there to comfort and strengthen and heal. They may have been miserable, low, but we were doing what we could to dig them out of rock bottom. This is not what I'm cut out for, it's not what I'm good at, but it's what I'm doing now. And now, just a moment drowned in infinity, is all I have.