Annie, are you okay?

My ex-boyfriend is in Austin. In Texas, there’s a grocery store chain named HEB. You wanna know what HEB stands for? Here Everything’s Bettter.

That’s hilarious.

It’s a Sunday, and a few routine phenomena are observable. Various religions, within and without the Abrahamic tradition, enjoy worship service on this day. Many, many people, within and without Abrahamic tradition, enjoy brunch in crowded restaurants on this day. Many people, within and without, etc, etc, sleep late and do the crossword. And some people, Abrahamic-brunch-eating-crossword-doers, or no, watch the “Law and Order: SVU” marathon on the USA channel.

I have mixed emotions about my Law and Order addiction. That guy who plays Detective Eliot Stabler is a dreamy, dreamy dream. And Mariska Hargitay is the female protagonist of the NEW, new millennium. But, the show makes a number out of “taking liberties with constitutional rights” and even though these messages are couched in the persecution/prosecution of the worst, mostly white, mostly male violators, I still can’t get used to the primetime advertisement of preemptive striking against easy targets.

Blurg. What did that last (ridiculously run-on) sentence even mean?

I don’t like child abusers. or predators, pedophiles, rapists, any of ‘em. Nor do I like Dick Cheney, George Bush 1 and 2, not a big fan of Karl Rove, Ronald Reagan.

I think all of those people, predators to Reagan, are jerks. They cause harm to our communities, they injure our loved ones, they actively limit the potential of our lives and the lives of the people we care about. They cause us to be afraid.

The way we defend ourselves from this fear (assuming we are all going to keep on keeping on within these societal structures) is to demand that all of these perpetrators, whether national or neighborhood, are held to the same standards. If you get to ambush a possible child predator with TV cameras and FBI online impersonators, then you get to ambush Supreme Court judges with similar devices. Put away a neighborhood  drug user, put away a presidential drug user.

The US legal system is pretty good in theory. Where it fails, it fails monumentally, but I can’t help but think that a reason for that failure is public acquiescence. If the characters on Law and Order are going to run around violating legal rights because they are SO convinced that those violations will result in an ultimate good - okay, then use those violations against the specifically named in addition to the generally suggested evil doers.

I love these girls. They are so young, and whether because of that or despite it, they are so resilient, open, so engaged. They live their struggles and successes to the hilt, they feel every moment of each, and they do it all with absolute integrity and dignity. They just roll their eyes and get on with it.

One kid I work with has gotten out and then gone back to her pimp a couple of times already. These are her practice tests. She is gradually getting used to living out of the life, wrapping her head around finding a job, getting her GED, doing normal things which 7 months ago seemed completely out of her range of possibility. I know that every time she goes back - even though each time she gets stronger, her belief in herself deepens, and she sees more of what her life could be - I may never see her again. But her attitude is that she is going to make this happen. She’s broke, she’s homeless (moving from one motel room to another) the only things she owns are in my possession, but she is healthy, alive in her mind and in her soul. She likes to talk, she likes to sing. She makes everyone laugh. She blazes.

This girl has been staying alive in the life for at least three years, she has seen some horrible shit, she has been on the receiving end of even worse.

And she has more humanity than I can describe.

All of my girls do.

One girl is back with her mom now. She’s got a job, she wants to go to community college, she’s saving up for her own apartment. All she wants to do now is eat good food and talk. And talk.

Sometimes when I’m watching her, I can kind of see her blooming into her own skin. Starting to fill out, like her body used to be a strange fitting piece of clothing which she is now growing into.

She has anxiety because she feels eyes on her at times, in her own neighborhood she thinks everyone knows about her or is looking at her sideways, and maybe sometimes they are. But she lives with it, she doesn’t lash out. She tells me that when she gets comfortable with herself and gets over the past she won’t feel that way anymore. I still haven’t been able to figure that out.

I just want to celebrate these kids and have everyone know them. I’d forgotten that people can be like this. I’d wrap them up in everything I have in my heart and take them away from it all if I could, but until then I’ll just settle for being lucky enough to know them.

I like my job. We do good things.

We are available 24 hours/day at the other end of the line for anyone who needs to talk about anything that is troubling them, and anyone who needs a place to stay, or counseling, or medical help. We show up at hospitals and police stations, and many other locations, to help a person through what could be the worst day of their life.

And we get kids out of the sex trade. Sometimes.

Some other times, the kids we make contact with are gone. Nothing we say can convince them to trust us. Or their pimp finds them and takes the child away. Or the system fucks up.

Or maybe nothing. Maybe the kid is so hurt, it appears that there is nothing left in them to help. I’ve worked with people in the sex industry before and it is painful enough to know what goes on in the lives of adults. The old saw, of course, is that is it worse to know that a child has to endure those same things. And that some souls can’t come back from the damage. It can be like trying to grab ahold of someone made of water.

Instead of looking at someone dressed a certain way, and seeing them wearing a sign that says, “Prostitute,” see a sign that says, “Help.”

All of the bad things that happen to the kids I’ve met, the things that break them down or make them disappear forever, happen right out in public everyday, with hundreds of people watching.