ARD Interview

The handwritten stream of conscious piece I wrote while waiting in the classroom of the Criminal Administration building for my group interview. Full text below.

I am sitting in the classroom of the Criminal Administration Building with a strange cross section of my fellow citizens. We are all here for an interview to determine our eligibility for the ARD program as we have all been arrested for DUI. I am writing this on the back of one sheet of my arrest records because I don't have a notepad in my purse and I cannot use my cell phone. There are students, professional looking adults, black, white, hispanic... Some are sitting primly forward, others are slouching and taking up space with the aggressive casualness of a testosterone soaked gorilla. 

The police officer who checked me in is a fresh faced smiling and engaging young man. I'd probably find him attractive if I wasn't so sick with the stress of this entire ordeal. I have been told over and over, by my husband, my parents, an attorney, that this will be fine, that it is a blip on the screen of my life. But it feels so much larger and more disastrous than that. I try to put my own situation in perspective. As I walked into this room a pair of fellow offenders were talking and the young woman admitted to driving 90mph on a local highway and crashing her car. I was not speeding and swerved a bit over the yellow line. Damn vertigo.

The room is filling up a bit as more people straggle in, waiting until the last minute, pushing off the inevitable, or perhaps not caring enough to need to be here early as I compulsively need to be. I find myself wondering if the interview will start exactly at 10:30am as scheduled or if we will be left waiting in the cold institutional gray and blue room with 30-year-old plastic chairs and tables for two. 

It is December 4th, 2012 and the air conditioning is on. It is rattling the vent above my right ear. The cold air is somehow snaking around my knees and feet and my legs are cold. I am glad I wore a jacket over my sweater that is buttoned to my neck to hide my tattoos. I keep worrying the hole in my lip where my labret normally lives. I'm trying to pass for "normal." Several of these people around me obviously don't care. 

I am sitting in the middle of the room and don't want to stare openly around me, but it appears that there are barely any seats left. I wish I had thought to bring a book or a magazine as did the woman in front of me. Alas all I have is this pen and paper on which to write. I don't feel the need to re-read the charges against me as they are burned on my conscious like a brand. I wish I wore a watch. The clock is behind me and I don't wish to turn in my seat to count the seconds until I am finished with this next step in my "rehabilitation." 

I just cannot get over how all this, this stupid mistake and resulting stress and inconvenience, is the result of my relaxing and enjoying a night with friends after a series of horrible events. 

I had fun. I made an error in judgment. I am being punished. 

I think that part  of me has expected to be punished for having fun, for enjoying anything too much. It feels as though any time I stop worrying, stop feeling dread, stop expecting the worst, and just relax and enjoy, something bad happens. It is a wonder I ever let my guard down at all. It can be truly exhausting living like this every day of my life. And honestly, if I stretch my memory back as far as I can reach it, I don't find a time in my life I wasn't like this. Expecting the worst. Knowing that there was a monster around the corner. 

10:50am. Looks like we are starting now. Only 20 minutes late.