At the terminal looking at my best friend walk away that I spent the last two months with I realized I was alone. The expectant summer that was to come seemed so dark and unexplored. I had notions about what I wanted to do with my school free days. I just completed my sophomore year in college and I decided that it was time to start making money so I could become more independent. This is a moment every young person experiences the transition from relying on everyone else to pay your bills to realizing that you are going to have to start paying the bills. Naturally, the first step to being able to support yourself is to get a job.
I already had a job working at the local Baseball stadium. I got the job when I drove by the park and saw a job fair going on. I decided that I would go in and try to get hired. I basically walked in, filled out some quick information and got told I was hired before I was even asked any questions. Needless to say I was a little shocked by the lack of interest in how I perform as a worker. My boss being a male was insisting even though I had no experience being a waitress I would do great. How did he know? Since then, I have been a desperately confused waitress for the last two months.
Working part time at the baseball park only took up a few hours during my week I needed to find other employment so I would have less free time. Summer can be so boring and silent when your days are filled with nothing. The heat in Phoenix is a sweltering 115 degrees. I got up early so I could start my job- hunting while it was warm and not an oven. The search began with ease and I felt confident about the hunt. Looking around a high-end shopping mall like a tiger hunting for my pray. It took roughly less than an hour for me to decide that I could not ignore the sweat pouring down my face. It was hot and I did not feel like looking for a job when I get exhausted from just walking from store to store. The point when I realized it is not going to get any cooler is when I decided that I could apply for all these jobs on the Internet. I went home with determination to find a job, which ended up being an afternoon of watching T.V.
In the next few days I was watching my roommate go to work at a local gym and I asked her if they were hiring. Before I knew I was in the gym filling out an employment application.
Getting an interview for the gym came shortly after I filled out the paperwork. I met with the Membership director and he escorted me into his office. The interview started with him explaining that he had already decided to hire me but would have to run through one or two questions just for procedure. Imagine my shock when this is the second job I got before I even opened my mouth. I do not know what the world is coming to when a person can look at you and decide if you are going to be a good worker or not.
I started work at the gym and it allowed me to be always on the move. I was feeling so lonely; I needed to do everything I could to keep my mind focused on other things. Summer is supposed to be the greatest times in a student’s life, but I could not wait for mine to be over. I was so alone at one point I decided I needed something to take care of.
My roommate’s family owns a farm and one day I asked her about getting a kitty to keep me company. She informed me that there were kitties running wild on her farm and we could go pick one to bring home. The drive to the farm was long but I was hopeful about finding a future cuddle buddy. When we arrived at the farm I was ready to rope my kitty. These kitties were wild so you had to literally chase them down and play and spend your afternoon playing a game of catch-the-cat. I spotted a black beauty, snuck in on it and using my GREAT WHITE hunting skills I caught my prize. Feeling a sense of pride with my new captured buddy I decided that I had to buy it lavish gifts in order to apologize for my previous stunt of stealing it from its home.
My roommate and I go the brilliant idea to take it into a local grocery store inside a large purse. We thought the little kitty would enjoy the comfort of the bag; we were so wrong. The little cat started yelping as if it were crying for someone to hear it and come to its rescue. Through the scratches we proceeded through the store down to the pet section. Even though the animal’s wailing was loud we thought we could get away with our sneaky cat antics. A store worker walked by our aisle and we freaked then when he kept walking we laughed at how nervous we got when he marched by. The same worker walked by again but this time turned into our aisle and hearing the screams asked if we had a cat in our bag. We batted our eyelashes and suggested his accusations were insane. Then as he kept pressuring us with questions and the cat’s cry got louder we broke and admitted our guilt. We did not get into trouble but got informed our hairy friend had to wait in the car. Humiliated I bought kitty litter and a collar.
Days were now filled with working and cuddling with my kitty. Things were starting to feel a little less lonesome. My kitty was lovely it slept so nice on the couch and would purr when it climbed into bed with me at night. These blessed moments I shared with my kitty ended fast. The cat went crazy! It would run back and forth in the apartment and then slam itself into our sliding glass door. It wanted out, it wanted to be free from the chains of my small apartment and I had the scratch marks to prove it. My roommate and I took that same drive back to the farm and left the demented cat at the ranch. There was supposed to be another litter of kitties at the farm and we decided we would try being kitty parents once again but instructed my roommate’s mother to not expose the kitty to the outdoors.
The summer went on and I tried to ignore the feeling of loneliness I was constantly experiencing. Working so much allowed me to never just be sitting around my apartment wallowing in my pity. The truth is I felt abandon by everyone. My family did not come visit, my friends went on vacation and I had no boyfriend. No one seemed to care about how I was or call to see if things in my life were going smoothly. The silence of summer was discouraging.
Working at the gym was extremely boring and I often watched the minutes pass on the clock. The ballpark was the complete opposite to working at the gym. The park was outdoors and in the middle of summer Phoenix can be dangerously hot. By the time I walked from the parking lot into the stadium I had to sit down and drink a whole water bottle just so I would not get completely dehydrated. I would be constantly running from one end of the restaurant to the other, taking orders from people as my sweat was dripping down my face. The work was exhausting.
The only company I had in my apartment was the new kitty I picked up from the farm a few days after we took the other back. Waiting on the couch for me to return, my feline friend gave my something to look forward to when I arrived home each night. I tried to read my Bible every night so I could talk with God. I often found my thoughts to be distracted by the empty feeling in my heart.
Nights were restless. The slow hum of my air-conditioning unit would eventually sing me to sleep. One night I tried to get comfortable and I noticed there was no familiar song coming from the air conditioning. The air was hot and stagnant. In the middle of summer my air unit broke. I tried to sleep through the heat, worried that I would die in the night from dehydration. I had to get up in the middle of the night and shower because I was drenched in sweat. The next few days at work were tiring due to lack of sleep because of my air situation. It was funny when my air stopped working I thought of the soldiers fighting in Iraq. The temperature of the summer ranges well over 130 degrees. They have to wear full gear all the time and suffer hardships for the good of our country. Their situations makes me humble because I can go stay somewhere else and escape the heat while they have no choice. I am not sure how they survive with no air conditioning but I was not going to.
The calls started to the airconditioning repair man and I made one each day for roughly three days. No one returned my calls in response to my inquiry about getting my air unit fixed. Sleeping became a regimen of getting up every three hours to bathe. Two weeks went by where I had to sleep in my own sweat; I was becoming furious. I had reached my breaking point. I called facilities to get it repaired but this time my tone on the message I left was anything but nice. I screamed my heart out and laid my foot down to the answering machine.
Finally someone came to fix my air conditioning. I was thrilled that my yelling tactics worked. Since the repairmen were going to be in the house all day I decided to go to the lake with my roommates. It was just the girls out on the boat water skiing and sun tanning. The day could not have been more perfect. The ride home I checked my voicemail and one of the messages was from the facilities crew saying that something happened to our apartment and I needed to call them immediately. I called back as soon as my fingers could dial the number. The guy on the phone explained to me that while they were fixing my apartment air conditioning unit they busted a pipe and water flooded my apartment. I was devastated.
It seemed like nothing about my summer was going right. The dreams that I had about how my summer would pan out were just not coming true. Every time I felt a hint of joy like going to the lake or having a kitty it would be taken from me and I would be left with my loneliness. Why was I feeling this way and why wasn’t anything going my way? Little by little I became absorbed in self-pity. The situations may have seemed like little occurrences but I felt like they were the biggest deal in the world.
Lying in bed one night trying to go to sleep, all the struggles I was feeling were running wild in my mind. I could feel a headache slowly erupting. Thinking about the summer days behind me, I was wondering where God was in the whole thing. I did not feel his presence. Perhaps the fault was mine that he was no longer my focus. I was so attentive to my own wants and needs that I did not pay attention to Gods.
Remembering all the days that passed in the last few months, all the emotions came rushing back to me: loneliness, loss, stressed, tired, and excitement. All the time I was ignoring the one who desired to be with me. I guess you could say that was the night I rediscovered God. When you accept Christ into your life you make a vow to always have a relationship with him. Although God never left me during my deserted summer days I may have left him. I discovered this was the soul reason I could not get the depression out of my days. The empty feeling was not because my kitty tried to attack my arm, it was because I did not focus on the love God was constantly shining on my life. It is sometimes so easy to ignore God because I cannot see him. I struggled with my faith and considered the rough summer a wake up call from my God. At the end of my summer I worked hard, got all my friendships back and learned that I will never have to feel lonely again.
