PEACE

     When I was about to graduate high school, I was scared to death and depressed about my life… The last day of school, I looked down from the bridge connecting the north and south side of the high school..I saw my six closest friends walking, giggling.  They each had their important plans after graduation … …..Five of them were going to college and one had a great job lined up….They all did the right things… They worked in the summers, some during the whole year.  They got good grades and helped others.  Then there was me.  My main goal was getting in plays at school and even though we were all in marching band together, they practiced and I didn’t.  I fooled around a great deal and I barely graduated.  I was prepared for nothing.  My parents were very worried.  My father said the only thing that I knew how to do was to memorize lines.  No amount of lectures from them worked.   In March of my senior year, after the musical I did was done, I got a job at the local hospital working in the kitchen.   Since I did not get my driver’s license because I was too scared to drive, this was good because I could walk there.  I was not liked at this job.  I couldn’t do anything right.  I would be given a task and I would screw it up.  Not on purpose, I just was incredibly immature.  The older women were annoyed, the young girls wanted to kill me and my supervisors were as patient as they could be.

   So, after I watched my friends, there was an awards ceremony that day.  I received the Best Thesbian award, but it felt so hollow. We got to come home early after that and that was our last day of high school.  I came home thinking I had no future and had a few hours before I went to work.  My mother was working and she would be home right after I left.  We would just miss each other.  I sat for a second, thinking my life was over.  I figured I messed up every opportunity for a future that I had.  When you are 17, you can’t see anything down the road… even a week or two… even a second.   I felt like a piece of dirt.  Then, out of nowhere, I decided I just wouldn’t feel bad that afternoon.  So I cleaned the kitchen, made the beds and vacuumed a little.  I figured she could at least come home to a clean house even though her daughter was a failure.  I put the award I got on the dining room table where she could see it.  I put my uniform on, complete with hairnet, and went to work. 

    Work was the same.  Very hard.   I was taking trays of food from hospital rooms and putting them in a big “thing”.   When I knelt down to load one up, a very slow feeling of peace started at the top of my head and bathed me… almost like being enveloped in love.  It was an unexpected feeling….   I felt something I hadn’t felt in many years, which was peace.   Somehow, a little service in a dark hour for me paid off.  In that moment, I didn’t feel like I was a failure.