New In Town

by Judith Bakkensen

 

I am in a new place with my cat, Lucy.  Yes, after Lucy Lawless.  Every person who shows me kindness is a potential friend or maybe just a passing stranger.  A woman helped me move into my apartment.  I spent two hours with her, yet I haven't seen her since.  A volunteer, she was, just passing by and jumped into rescue the other end of my mattress.  Did my strange belongings or art scare her away?

 

I have found some work already but not an income.  I can breathe more deeply now and the eyes that look back at me in the mirror are less hollow and frantic.  I have enough hope and faith in myself to make it.  I know that.  Yet the aloneness erodes my river bank and I slip into despair at times.   A curt response from a potential employer, a pair of women laughing together leave me shaky.  I have no one to laugh with yet.  I am making progress.  I am a little bruised, but I am not broken.  It is no wonder with bumping into all this strangeness with my whole being.

 

Yet I have phone calls and emails from my history to keep me afloat.  I am cared about and loved from afar.  

 

Today I will get up again and move forward.  After all, I love myself.  I am my very best friend, mentor, sister, lover, caregiver, provider, cook, foot rubber, head massager, and I've got Lucy.