Paying the Piper

I am officially sentenced.

The DA dropped the resisting arrest charge after all. I was sentenced for a first-time DUI and refusing a chemical test. The judge gave me time served for the community service requirement. I'm left to fulfill the following: a 3-month DUI program and a fine. The fine is $1980. My lawyer cost me $2000. I have to pay the DMV $125. The DUI class is $477. I still owe my parents $550 for bailing me out and getting my car out of hock. Luckily, the court and the DUI program have payment plans. My parents are extremely lenient creditors. Nevertheless, paying all of this off isn't going to be a cake walk. I work for the government, after all.

I went to the orientation for my DUI class today and it was not an uplifting experience. I'm going to be spending a lot of time there over the next three months. I have to go to a weekly group therapy session for twelve weeks. I have to go to an education class for six weeks, and I have to have three one-on-one meetings with a counselor. I also have to go to three "self-help" meetings (AA). Of course, I go to 3-4 of these a week anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I am fully aware that these are the fair and square consequences of my actions and no one else's doing. They played a Tom Brokaw production while we waited for our numbers to be called to set up our class schedule. It was a documentary about what happened to a carful of kids who were hit by a drunk driver. One died. One was seriously injured, requiring months of surgeries and physical therapy. All the survivors were psychologically scarred and incurred thousands of dollars in medical bills--the driver was uninsured and they weren't fully covered by their own insurance companies, if they had health insurance at all. It was depressing. So don't get me wrong. I'm grateful and lucky that this is all there was. Extremely grateful that no one was hurt, or killed. That my kids weren't in the car with me.

But I think because I have been working a program and managing my car-less situation in fairly good spirits, I had started to put the events of January 16 behind me. Today was just a reminder that there is a lot more work to do. And I guess I was chagrined to find myself properly in the company of--there's no other way to say it--common criminals.