what was i thinking?

today is the best i've felt in awhile. today is strange.

i look like a preschooler's art project - teal blue long sleeved tee, pale pink handkerchief hem skirt (handkerchief hems are the ones where the bottom of the skirt is cut into a bunch of V shapes - very popular last spring/summerish, you've seen one on me. the assymetrical bottom-of-skirt aids the impression that i'm a piece of construction paper that has been attacked by safety scissors wielded by a 4 year old), black leggings and midnight blue fingernails, hair messy and clipped up into a bun-like creature. i am le sex on a stick, as they say in Le France.

anyway. i've cried each of the past four days and i don't think that's a bad thing, and i'm not sad (nor am i hormonal). there are just some truths in this world that can only be honestly recognized through tears. i'm young and idealistic enough to believe that. i know tears don't change anything, but they are - shudder at the phrase - part of the process.

most of what i've been thinking about the past 24 hours is: what the fuck was i thinking when i said i'd partcipate in this crazy-ass prison writing program?

yeah, easy for you to think it's cool. you're not the one who will be metal-detectored and face a half dozen women who are wondering what the fuck makes you think you have a right to be there while you half-agree with them.

lea, my teaching partner, warned me that some of the women are pregnant, and many are mothers. they might have their babies in prison. (i will be getting to know these women and trying to forge relationships with them?) most of them will be older, to some degree, than i am. ALL will have more experience than me. and, um, i'm privileged. they have their own ideas about the "rich college kids" who come to teach them. (i would too.) they ask questions: are you doing a paper about this? are you going to write about us?

i'm scared. because this is real. this might *actually matter* to someone. this is not the same thing as helping an opera patron find the bathroom or screwing up someone's half-caf double soy cappucino.

what right DO i have to do this?