After midnight, I sat at the foot of my bed. The room was simple, no decorations. I was being helped by a friend of a friend who lived in a trailer in a small town surrounded by cornfields somewhere in Illinois. They had a spare room which I called home for a couple months. I was a 3rd shift waitress, serving biscuits and gravy, coke and gallons of coffee to the regulars, the local farmers and mechanics, the factory workers and my fellow lost 20 something peers.
I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing with my life, other than writing, making money and hanging out with friends...but it wasn't enough. This early morning, in the quiet, the empty flat quiet of the edge of nowhere in central Illinois, I was trying to write a beautiful anything. My letters were big and chunky, sloppily scrawled across each line. The paper was recycled so had an off white tint and it was wide lined. I remember the big spaces available for each word made me feel childlike and inept, as if my life at that moment was hopelessly stuck.
Sitting alone in this emptiness I temporarily called home, cross legged on my blankets, I listened to a hard rain dance on the roof, splash on the cement, slosh onto the muddy patches of earth outside my window. I would write for 10 minutes then sit stone still, listening. I'd sit and only sadness sat with me, a determined alert sadness that cannot sleep, that only hears the rain, the scratch of a pen and my racing thoughts. Then I would write for 10 more, over and over in this way, all the while under this natural symphony, until dawn.
I love the tap, slop, swish of a downpour, the tink thunk of water patting window pane, even when I was stuck with what I perceived as my pitiful lost self.
Posted by heidi at January 7, 2010 12:04 AMI see a gift. A gift of solitude. And a Strong patients that I wish would grow inside of me. I've never been alone. I have never lived alone. I wish I would have had that chance. To just live and be alone and sit with my thoughts and paint and pray without someone bursting in. You are lucky:)
Jen Wood
It took me a while to realize how lucky I was to have all that time alone, but I do believe it was incredibly valuable. Then again, I came to expect so much control over my life that when we had Devyn and then he got mobile, then he had more complicated needs I really had no skills to go with the flow. I believe this is one of the wisdoms in David's driving OTR for as long as he did. I had to learn how to live with other people and accept a bit of chaos, a bit of give and take even when I didn't "feel" like it.
Posted by: heidi at January 9, 2010 11:24 PM