control

queen anne

I was taken by surprise-- how much this place turned me around.  It has been a wonderful few months of travel and newborn babies, of panic and calm, of snow and singing, of cake and morning, of despair and hope, of justice and justice and mercy.  Tonight, I turned out the lights, said goodnight to the skyline, and locked the door for the last time.  I walked past the neon signs of the gentleman's club, the doughnuts and the books, the rubber chickens hanging from red drapes, and something nameless suddenly shed from me with the rain.


I stopped, and realized I didn't know where I was going.  For a year now, I had told myself that I only had to make it through to March, to the end of this externship, and I would reassess what exactly it was that I was doing in law school, what I was here for.  Everything I had planned up until tonight were plans already put into motion.  Many months ago, I had made it so that I would only need to put one foot in front of the other.  But tonight my feet had no further destination.  So I kept walking.  I talked it out with a friend.  I chased the moon, up the hill and back down it on the other side.  I always had a plan (not measured by anything physical like what I was doing in my life, by time, or by social accolade) but by the direction of my soul.  I always had dreams and with them little steps lined up months, years in advance to achieve them.  But for the first time in a long time, I had nothing.  I didn't know what classes to take, and I didn't know what to do in the summer, or afterwards.  I hadn't made a single real plan for over a year now, and I felt no anxiety, no sadness, no feeling of incompetence attached to this lack of direction.  For the first time, I trusted that what would happen next was up to God, to the universe, to actions belonging to people I didn't know.


With so many variables, I didn't need a plan just yet, and I decidedly enjoyed the rest of my walk.  When I finally made it home, I found something curious.  Some months ago, I had made a wish and had forgotten about it because I needed money to make it happen and I knew free money wasn't easy to come by.  But the money came, in a little envelope on my kitchen counter, and nudged me forward to find those little steps again.  O dreams, you have good timing.