I lived in a Trailer Park When I Was 23

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 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, factory workers and my fellow lost 20 somethings.
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, I was trying to write a beautiful anything. My letters were big and chunky, sloppily scrawled. 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 cement, slosh onto 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 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 loved 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.