when will I be healed?

As some of you may know, before I was in charge of wiping butts and filling sippy cups, I had another employer. I was an assistant district attorney. It was a really great job, actually. I made some wonderful friends and we always had fun going to lunch and going out for drinks after work. And I would get to work late. That is at least H's perception of my job, because that is all I told him about. It never seemed right to tell him about interviewing a girl in my office first thing in the morning who had been anally raped by some sex offender her mom picked up on a bar, or about the autopsy photos of a murdered two year old I had to see before lunch, or about the douche bag who quote "really [doesn't] get all that enhancement stuff" who beat my boss in his re-election bid. It's just not good dinner conversation and so instead I just told him about something fun my friend Sheri said at lunch or something annoying that my boss M____ S_____ had done.

And I never ever told him about my most disturbing case ever, my first felony trial, which was more gruesome to me that any murder, and that is the guy who had 9000 pictures of child porn on his computer. There are things that the brain is never supposed to see. And if it does see them, it becomes damaged. Like you've been shot. My brain was shot by this loser defendant whose computer password was pussy. There was one picture in particular of a little girl about Annabelle's age. I'll spare you the details. But it was sickening.

When you have a gun shot wound or a broken bone or amputation, it heals. Slowly. But when it rains or is cold out, you still feel that twinge of pain, phantom limb syndrome, whatever. And so here I have been, in Stepford for 2 years now. And the first summer, I went to traffic court, and had a perfectly lovely conversation with a guy about his open felony warrants and he and I chatted for some time before I realized that people were staring at us, me the white girl in the suit and him the black dude with the open felony warrants. Fast forward to the fall, when my neighbor was murdered by his grandson. Decapitated. We found out about it on our walk back from the park. My girlfriend was so horrified she almost vomited. I just wondered aloud if the defendant was a juvenile or an adult. Then the following summer, when all the moms in my moms club adopted a homeless family and were trying to get the dad a job, until they found out that he had been to prison. They were all shocked and the mom who was the head do-gooder was so apologetic about it and I thought, "well of course he's an ex-con" and wondered why we weren't going to help him any more.

Annabelle doesn't know about my wound. As far as she knows, mama's job has always been to take care of her and papa and talullah and keep the house clean. Most days, I am fine with that

Fast forward to this spring when I read the Steig Larsson girl with the dragon tattoo books. I had lunch with a girlfriend and we were discussing them. She told me that she had a very hard time reading them because she found the subject matter so disturbing. I had to think for a moment. What was disturbing in those books. Finally I remembered it, "you mean the anal rape?" She said "well that, and the incest. The father and the brother." I nodded, and pretended to think it was disturbing too.

And now I wonder, when will I be healed?