Family Support

I wake up every morning praising God and go to bed each night an atheist. It's a problem. Many years ago, I worked for the District Attorney's Child Support Collections Office. We called it Family Support. That sounds much nicer, doesn't it? Family Support. In reality, it was a bloated extortion racket coated by a thin veneer of syrupy wholesomeness, Family Support.

I used to show up for work with dark circles under my eyes and rumpled clothes. My supervisors thought I was out partying all night. Given the fact the my armpits usually stank like a brewery, I can understand their suspicions. But it wasn't so. In truth, I had been at home, sober, tossing and turning in existential anguish, enduring what Edgar Alan Poe called a long dark night of the soul.

Just who is God, and why is She doing this to us?

cvvvv

(Whoops. That was my neighbor's cat walking on the keyboard. He's a splendid little chap who hangs around the house every once in a while. I don't mind.)

Some days I'm convinced there's a divine intelligence governing our affairs. Other times, I know with the same abslolute conviction that we're all just muddling through a Godless chaos, pretending, hoping, erecting totally arbitrary values to give our lives meaning. It's a problem.

I quit Family Support. But I still suffer from insomnia.