Silent Noises

I parked my car in the driveway
To the sound of my engine turning off.
I heard the sound of the car door closing.
I heard the sound of my keys,
My footsteps as I entered my kitchen.

I pulled out my dinner and listened
To the microwave whir
And the mocking beeping.

My fork clinked against the plate.
The silence was deafening.
I sighed.

I opened my computer and heard
The sound of my fingers
Banging the keys as I typed.
My mouth felt lonely and dry.

I heard the leather couch squeak
I heard my little sips of beer.
I heard the glass being set on the table.

Noiselessly, I went upstairs.
I turned on the shower.
Silently, I heard the water
Hitting the tub and my body.
I heard the pat of my wet feet
On the bathroom floor.

I heard my bed groan.
I heard my breathing as I fell asleep
Alone in a dark room.

The next day was the same,
And so was the next.
Quiet.
Alone.
Silent noises.

Eventually,
A firecracker was lit under me.
I yelped and I ran
Until I found my place here.

Love and friendship are magical,
Shocking,
Thrilling.

Today,
silence shirks me.
I hear myself singing
At every turn.
Don't ask me how.


God bless.

Dear One

Dear one,

I'm sorry I've been ignoring you but it's really my only option. It doesn't mean I don't care, and it certainly doesn't mean I've forgotten about you. I will not and cannot forget.

Directly communicating with you is dangerous. Stirring up old emotions would only set both of us back in our quests to move on. Perhaps it's an unfair assumption that you have this same quest as me, but you ought to. Moving on is imperative.

I wonder if I ever fully will.

Our love story will never be published. Its incredible drama will never show up on a movie screen. It's a tragedy that is seared into our minds forever, but once we die, our story will die with us. But we both know how remarkable it was. Love like ours is once-in-a-lifetime, and one of my greatest struggles in my efforts to date others has been the sinking fear that my one-time chance at love is gone.

But that's a lie. We can both fall in love again. We can both live love stories with happier endings. And we should try to allow that to happen rather than constantly looking over our shoulders at the past.

Finding romantic love again is not the most important part of life, though. Finding ultimate love is. I don't know how many times I've told you but I'll tell you again: Jesus loves you.

Not only does Jesus love you; Jesus is blown away by you. He adores you and values your life more than his own. He cannot get enough of you. He pursues you relentlessly, whether you're paying attention or not. He has saved your life, literally, multiple times.

My love couldn't save you, and neither can the love of any other woman. But know that you are loved, and able to be saved.

Please listen to me because I care for you.

Reach out for help from someone if you start to feel hopeless. Do not be ashamed. Your life is worth it.


God bless.

-Maryann

P.S. Thank you for serving homeless people. I am so, so proud of you.

Comes and Goes

In the last couple months, I've learned a startlingly infantile lesson: that time passes.

My whole life I've functioned as though the past were something to shake my head and smile at, the present is infinite, and the future is nonexistent. In other words, what I want to have happen needs to happen now or it will never come to fruition. I suppose you could call that either madness or impatience.

This mentality has caused me to do a number of stupid things, such as jump into relationships that weren't meant to be had, lose sleep in January over what my summer plans would be, and fret about savings before I've even been in the work force long enough to build any sort of wealth. Because what is true now will never change so things need to be figured out immediately.

Although I'm not one to plan what I'm going to say for a presentation, what I'm going to do for the day, and what I am going to get so-and-so for their birthday, I do tend to try to plan things that really have no way of being planned, such as the ultimate destination of my career, my hypothetical future marriage, and where on this planet I want to finally sink my toes in. I'm finally recognizing the absurdity of this aimless planning. I grasp for control over things that I have no business controlling at the moment, if ever.

Lucy Schwartz's song "Time Will Tell" has been a ballad of truth for me for almost a year now but even more so recently. It was stuck in my head for almost the entire month of May as I repeated to myself the line, "Time will tell, take it slow." "Time will tell, take it slow." "Time will tell, take it slow."

Time passes. Time happens. The future comes. The present becomes the past. The answers will eventually be revealed. Events will unfold. What do I have to fear? Why do I need to rush?

Another thing that I have had to repeat to myself endlessly is "[Blank] will come and go." I'm not sure where my brain got this particular phrase but it has proved so true and so useful. Mostly I fill in the blank with a date. I was particularly stressed about May 25th, because it was "moving day" for me, a day I'd leave the life I knew and begin again elsewhere. "May 25th will come and go," I'd say to myself, and it has certainly come... and gone.

I have mentioned before that I have committed to a year of no dating. As the end of the year approaches, I am nearly gripped with fear at the prospect of falling back into my old sinful and destructive habits the moment I am "freed" from my commitment, but I am also excited to end this chapter, despite the growth and personal insight that has occurred because of it. Either way, it will be a silently momentous day for me. I have a hard time believing it will actually happen and I'll actually have to deal with walking back into the ominous world of dating.

But that date will come and go. That date will come and go. And simply knowing that time will pass comforts and reassures me.

I still hate waiting. But I have found so much wisdom in the fact that waiting eventually gets you somewhere. Waiting may last a while, but it does not last forever. How good to finally know.


God bless.

Finding home

I suppose home began in my mother
In her womb, in her arms,
Safe in her voice, her smile, her presence, her love.

Home expanded
To a building I grew up in,
A city I was raised in,
A "permanent address."

Home became my own,
A place I furnished and filled
As any proper adult should.

"Home is where the heart is,"
So home was also with my friends,
Laughing and drinking beer,
Sharing stories and crying tears.

Then I shook out the blanket
And home became
Wherever I laid my head.

I folded the blanket and put it down
Home would be
Wherever I decided it would be
And I decided on here.

But if home is ever-changing
Alongside life,
Then is its definition defeated?

Or am I an alien
To anyplace forever,
Constantly in transition
Never letting dust settle?

I wonder.

I wander.

At the end, the very very end
though, I know,
Home is where I'll be.

For a Guy

Pardon me while I vent.

In a few weeks I'll be moving across the country, and one of the most common assumptions people make is that I'm moving out there for a guy. I frequently get asked, "Oh, is your boyfriend moving out there or something?" Forgive me, but I do not believe it is a fair assumption that I have a boyfriend, let alone that I would move so far away just to be with him.

While I am moving with the support and friendship of Lexi, I'd like to think that I'm making an independent move. I am doing this because I want to, not because I belong to anybody else. I'm a woman, and I'm young but I'm grown, and if you think that doesn't qualify me to make big, independent decisions, well, I really don't know what to say to you.

I almost want to scream, "I'M MY OWN PERSON!" but that wouldn't be entirely accurate. I'm God's person. He bought my soul at a price and in freedom I allowed him to take it. I'm not so sure about all the theological nuances regarding how much of that decision was mine and how much was his, but nevertheless, here I am, God's person.

So while I'd like to think that I'm doing this for me because I'm independent, gosh durnit, that's simply not true.

Once upon a time, in a magical place called Juneau, Alaska, I discovered something about myself, and that is that I feel much closer to my Lord when I am surrounded by his creation. When I am immersed in an untainted environment that he created and is still creating afresh every moment, he feels so much nearer to me, like I am breathing him in. It really is rather intimate. It brings healing and peace to my soul.

I have nothing against being in the city, but I need more access to the wilderness. So while to some people that may sound like a selfish thing ("I want an adventure!"), in essence it is a God thing ("I need to feel closer to my Creator").

Which really has nothing to do with any man, woman, or beast.


God bless.

Wild: A Book Review

"Wild," by Cheryl Strayed is, in my opinion, a complete misnomer.

Perhaps I'm wrong. The word wild can mean a lot of things, or at least take on a lot of different flavors. But when a book bears this title with a worn pair of hiking boots on the cover and claims to be about a woman solo hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), I'm going to assume that this kind of wild implies wanderlust, exploration, utter freedom. It conjures up images of some granola someone scrambling up majestic mountains, dancing as if no one were watching, running, laughing, jumping into water holes from 30-foot cliffs, and perhaps spontaneously weeping in a field of wildflowers.

This book was none of those things. The flavor of wild that it portrayed (although I still doubt wild is an appropriate term) is the type of wild that makes someone commit adultery with strangers, go on heroin binges, walk 1,100 miles with no preparation and no skills or knowledge, get an abortion, chuck a boot over a ledge never to be retrieved again, and hitchhike off the trail every couple weeks with a condom in tow to meet new people and get wasted for a "break from the trail."

So now you know why I think "Wild" is a misnomer.

Despite what I may have led you to believe at this point, I loved it.

Cheryl Strayed was not wild, in my opinion, and she wasn't particularly "a remarkable woman" as the back cover claimed, but she was extremely relatable, and to some degree admirable despite her many blunders on the PCT.

Perhaps I should pause at this point for a brief summary. Cheryl Strayed's mother died at a fairly young age and it was understandably traumatizing to Cheryl, who was in her early 20s at the time. She went through a period of self-destruction and semi-insanity which led to her divorce with a wonderful man. She somehow (it was never clear quite how), she decided to "find herself" or whatever on the PCT. So that's what she did. She hiked up and down these crazy mountains and had six toenails fall off. She met a fair amount of delightful and kind individuals on her trek and a handful of total creeps (enough so that I decidedly would never go on such a hike by myself). She might have almost died a couple times. She finally finished and her life was basically and apparently fixed after that.

I feel like I'm still not doing a good job selling this book. Let me try again to convince you.

Like I said, Cheryl was incredibly relatable. I was really able to get into her shoes (or boots, as it were). When her mom died, my mom died. When she was shooting up, I was feeling the strong but shallow pleasure. When she washed her sore feet in a creek, I felt the cold water rushing over them. When she met someone noteworthy, I felt in their presence the fear, or relaxation, or desire to flirt. When she left her condom behind during the one night she had the opportunity to use it, I felt the disappointment. When she shivered in her sleeping bag when it was rainy with temperatures in the 20s, I buried myself deeper in my blanket. When she despaired that she didn't have enough money or was otherwise unprepared for what she was doing, I vividly felt all the times I have made similar mistakes. When she saw the Bridge of the Gods at the end of her trek, I felt the magnitude of the trail behind me and the proverbial trail ahead.

Also, this book fanned the flame of my desire to go backpacking more often. So that was wonderful.

That's about all I have to say. Probably you should read as long as you're not super prone to just label someone as an idiot and brush them off.

P.S. The movie was good too but it was a little too graphic and the language a little too colorful for my tastes so I probably wouldn't see it again.


God bless.

End of the Beginning

I forgot to clock out on the day I turned in my notice of resignation at work. And I forgot to turn my work cell phone off until it rang when I was sitting in my car in my driveway at the end of the day.

Part of me doesn't want to leave my home state, doesn't want to say goodbye to the world I both know and love, and the rest of me knows I don't have a choice. I have found myself saying that I wish I could pick up my life here and take it with me, just zip it up, strap it to my back, and unload it on the other side of the country where I’m going. Or perhaps I could go fetch the mountains I so ache for and plant them here where my life already exists so I don't have to leave. But I can't. I had to choose, and yet, instincts and destiny and God chose for me. Off I go.

A guy I used to have a little crush on recently got engaged, and my roommate laughed at me when I found out and walked around the house belting out ADELE's "Someone Like You.” That's how I feel about this job that I have to tear myself away from. “Never mind, I’ll find coworkers like you.” “Never mind, I’ll find clients like you.” “Never mind, I’ll find employment like you.”

For those that don't know, I work in a mental health clinic. It’s my first job since graduating from college and I’ve worked there for only nine months. I started working with a caseload of about 35 cases last summer, and it's grown to almost 50. I feel like I've been through it already, and am walking out both heavier and lighter.

I've dealt with the stresses of trying to meet productivity (i.e. literal time spent with clients) while they are too mentally unstable to keep appointments, and been told that my job was in jeopardy because of it. I've dealt with being penalized for doing overtime while not having enough time in the regular workday to get my work done or care for my clients sufficiently. I know this isn't uncommon. Many people deal with workplace stresses and pressures. But there is another level to my job that I think, dare I say, makes it more difficult than most.

The first client that made me cry (because he yelled at me) ended up being my first client to die. In the mere nine months I've worked at this job, I've walked with my clients through countless hospitalizations, most of them due to suicidal ideation or attempts. I've seen my clients cry because they can't stop drinking, or can't overcome their addiction to cocaine, or don't know why they are so endlessly depressed, or for reasons they wouldn't or couldn't even tell me, just silently crying while I sat by, helpless. I've been screamed at and had things thrown at me by people I'd learned to love. I've heard clients say things like, "I just need somebody to actually care and make me a priority" while trying to balance their needs with all my other clients as well as keep my personal life separate and indifferent.

My job has not been all drudgery, of course. There have been countless joys, both big and small, from seeing clients grow closer to God, to clients telling me they’re grateful to me because I’m the only one who ever asks them how they’re doing or feeling, to clients taking a flattering personal interest in me, to clients opening up their deepest selves to me in ways even their families don’t always get to see, to seeing recovery from mental illness and drug use bring hope and restoration to once broken individuals.

All of this has taught me so many valuable lessons, some probably pretty standard to fresh adults like myself, some probably unique more unique to my line of work. Lessons like, "you will want to quit but sticking with it pays off" and "working is good for the soul even though you don't want to go in when your alarm goes off at 6 a.m. day after relentless day" and "people are basically bad" and "people are basically lovable" and "literally everyone is crazy of some kind and to some degree" and "just because you are a Christian and someone else is a Christian doesn't mean you're anything remotely alike, which is a good thing" and "hope exists."

I'm heartbroken to leave a job I grew to hate, then grew to love. After I told my supervisor, I went downstairs, walked out of the building, got in my car, and cried. I feel like I'm abandoning a lot of people by moving away.

At the same time, I know I've learned the lessons I need to learn, and I'm ready to stretch myself more and learn new lessons. Here I go.


God bless.