It’s been about seven months since I got back from my summer internship in St. Louis. Seven months of living, of moving about, of learning, of loving, of talking, of listening, of dreaming. Seven long months of distance from the experience that, on the one hand, continues to shape me and, on the other, continues to haunt me. Or perhaps I just repeat myself.
There isn’t a single day that goes by that I don’t experience something that sends me immediately hurtling backwards through time, space and thought to my lonely room in an empty old convent, to the playground swings, or to the church steps upon which I used to read Barth and Merton — steps which have since been sprinkled with blood. And what about the sirens? And the gunshots echoing in the distance? What about the children laughing in my ear as I carry them upon my back? The unmitigated brightness in the smile of a four year old blowing bubbles beside me? Such aching brutality and tear-evoking beauty and grace; such things I cannot escape, nor would I if given the chance.
All of this is to say that I am still thoroughly wrecked, in my own manifold way, by whatever it is you want to call the summer that I was twenty-two. I can’t look at anything the same. I can’t do anything the same. I can’t even be a person the same way anymore. I don’t know if that’s good, bad, or some strange amalgamation of in-between. But as I sit here in a cafeteria quickly filling up with my peers and friends, writing this and trying my hardest to fight back tears, I can’t help but be reminded that I am entirely messed up, marred almost beyond recognition. And for all of this, I don’t know what else to do but blame Jesus.
