Rude Awakening

I was talking to a friend of mine this morning who's a Deputy Sheriff in Mississippi (and we won't get specific here), and as we are talking, making the usual donut jokes, etc, etc, she says, "hold on a minute" and I hear her radio go off. I understand the words 929 and trailer park and we both laughed at that. Then she says, "holy hell, I gotta go, I got a suicide."

I text messaged her and said, "did you say suicide" and she responded, "yes".

In that instant I thought (because yeah, I can be sensitive sometimes, sometimes too much so), how can it be that someone out there feels so empty and so alone, that they have no one to turn too or thinks no one loves them enough, that they end their own life? Clearly they exist. And clearly, as we were laughing about trailer parks and their existence in the South, this man/woman (no, I don't know and it doesn't matter), was ending their own life.

My friend, she works in an area that runs the gamut from wealthy to poor, very poor -trailer park poor. Many times she gets called out to trailer parks where people live because they are doing their best to make ends meet and well, a trailer roof is better than no roof. Or, that's all they know and generations before them lived in trailer parks, so that's good enough for them.

I wondered if it was the man who beats on his girlfriend, who in a drunken rage burned the mattresses of the 5 (yes 5) children who live there, so they have to sleep in the recliners and on the couch, who knocked out all the windows of the trailer. It gets hot in Southern Mississppi, folks, HELL HOT, with humidity, bugs, etc, etc and yeah, no windows in this place. I don't think there's anything covering the gaping holes, I didn't ask, I didn't want to know the answer.

But sure as water is wet, that trailer, with the drunken man, the woman who thinks she can't do better and the 5 grocery store feet, dirty children, that trailer, well they have a big screen TV AND, ready for this, SURROUND SOUND! How's that?! And when I heard that I was snap angry and thought "what the fuck?, I bust my ass and even I don't have a big screen TV with surround sound." (not that I watch enough TV to warrant such a monstrosity, but still)

Then, I was sad. Sad to know that somewhere in Southern Mississippi, there are 5 children, who sleep on recliners because their beds have been burned, with a mom who can't see the great danger that will become them (get it, kids learn from watching...), with a DRUNK who is not a man at all, with a big screen TV and surround sound that allows them to escape from reality, if only until the man they call "daddy" becomes enraged once again.

And to think....I laughed at that trailer park.