This is the story of the brief time that Bob* was a part of my life.
From October 2006 to October 2007, I worked in the administration and monitoring positions at a residential facility here in Pensacola where newly-released inmates were court ordered to attend drug and alcohol abuse treatment. Up to 60 of these clients at a time lived in our facility, taking part in individual and group counseling and working to get back into the job force. Each week, some clients would rotate out and others would rotate in. Though I spent 50+ hours a week working among them, I never truly got to know the majority of the clients as there was a need to maintain a clear separation between profession and personal life.
But, try as I might, I did still get to know occasional clients very well—nothing remotely inappropriate, but some of these people.....you just couldn't help but like them. Yes, I knew many of the more troubling and disturbing details of their individual pasts, but I also knew that many of these people were struggling with addictions that had taken away their self-control along with their self-respect. The majority of the clients were good people who had made very bad choices and ended up in very bad situations. Then they had landed in our facility.
