Unchain my Heart
Then I started working at this job.
And I began to contemplate my whole life situation, kind of holistically. Like my own roots and the family that I had been relegated to for the better part of my life. And the jobs I have had over the years. I hate to say it, but any feelings of sympathy I had at the start just seemed to dissipate before long, and get buried under my own stagnating resentment of what I had to go through to get here.
The ugliness in my life is not as obvious as theirs is. Granted. No matter, I know what I have been through – my own private hell is all. I know it. Those people in there, in those projects, yes they have a lot more to deal with than most, but so do I, and how the hell can I concentrate on them when I can’t even help myself, I ask you?
Besides, any poor soul who has to live here is probably better just walking off the planet rather than calling the place home. Just look at it. Frankly, us taxpayers are fooled into believing that our money is helping these people, but subsidizing a concrete coffin and calling it a poor folk’s home is pathetic. That is my current opinion. End of story.
Given the choice, I might be hard pressed to choose between growing up with my family against this as the alternative. I mean face it, had I come from these projects and worked my way out of them, and did the same things I have done already, I might be famous right now. A born again American success story. Front page news they’d call me back home. I’d come back to visit the projects and everyone would say she rose from the streets to become a national hero.
Instead, I was brought up in the Rosenthal’s house on 1932 Rue Pershing in New Orleans, where things just were the way they were and getting out didn’t seem to be considered any big deal to anyone but me. There was nobody waiting around to shake my hand or give me a key to the city when I made my great exit. No mam.
Once I turn the corner, I start heading toward my office. Breathe deep, I tell myself and begin to stroll down the beautiful, quaint, tree-lined alley. It just so happens my office is on this sweet alley, a block that seems to exist in a vacuum from what surrounds it. Some streets are like that, I don’t know why. Then up the stairs I go to my swell job, to my outstanding position as office manager for the biggest nutball boss in the universe. I’d like to say right now that when I started working here, I imagined him to be a pretty swell guy.
It took about two weeks to realize I had been dead wrong in my initial judgment, but by then I was already getting a paycheck, and it was hard to turn around and start over again. I hate the whole interviewing process. It’s demoralizing to have to tell a bunch a strangers that you live and die to be a secretary. As if.