Barton, you're an asshole first of all, and thanks for that. I need an asshole in my corner, pushing me and all my buttons. Holy shit, that sounded sexual, and I apologize. It's too early and I spend way too much time with troubled kids now that it's my sole job, so I'm starting to think like them.
Not that I wasn't in their position a couple of years ago, but you know. It's weird from the other end, sort of getting them, and with their logic making perfect sense, but not wanting to admit to feeling that way too, because I don't want to reinforce them being destructive little bastards either here, or in society. I feel sort of like a hypocrite, hell, I definitely am one, but I'm trying here, and generally, we're doing good.
All the same, they need the kind of push I'm getting, and it's a lot easier to give them that when I have some idea of how it works. I'm actually thinking of moving in as full time staff. I don't have the credentials, so I can't therapize, and there's no way I could get into college to get the degree, but I'm still able to at least assist and talk them through things and handle day to day shit, and apparently I'm getting good at that.
Sometimes, I think my life is going to shit, but then I look around, and I'm reminded how much shit it used to be, and how much better it's gotten, and, I don't know. Maybe I want to show the kids that they can do that too, or maybe I want them to feel less alone, or maybe I'm trying to make up for my own fuck ups in life, but here I am and what started as a kind of whim turned out to be the best thing I have ever done with my life, EVER.
On the other hand, I'm sort of starting to see what Oliver went through with me, considering I wasn't an easy kid by any means. My parents were dead, I was fucked up, and I'm stubborn and pretty hard headed and an asshole at the best of times, and adding hormones to the mix...I was probably about as hard to deal with as a couple of my challenge kids, and, well. It makes me want to apologize to him every time I talk them down or smooth things over.
It's not so much guilt that's driving it now as a sense of, well, wanting to know what he would do. Is that insane? Am I crazy for wanting to talk to somebody I thought I hated to run some questions by him, and let him know what I've been doing, and that I finally know what it was like for him?
I'm starting to get into this way deep, and sometimes that scares me too. It's like I don't know who I am anymore so I'm wanting to reach out to something that I had before and sort of clinging to nothing in particular. Why does change have to be so hard when suddenly everything else is clear? I'm determined to do this right, but on the other hand, I want to have it done right NOW.
Anybody else get shit like this?
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