She’s in Imbil National Park, in her musty room in the ranger’s barracks. The mouse has kept her up for most of the night. She tried not to let it bother she (she is here doing ecology work, after all) but she can’t forget waking up once during night, when she was about ten years old, finding something small and furry scrambling on her bed next to her pillow. She swiped it off and sprinted to her parents’ room. They discovered a gap in her cupboard between the concrete floor and the gyprock, which the mice had apparently just opened as a new leg of their nocturnal highway system.
The pitter-patter of tiny feet begins again. They ate a big chunk out of her colleague’s leather belt last night, while it was locked inside her suitcase. She can’t be stuffed dealing with that sort of thing in the morning. She has enough to do as it is. She feels furry herself, blurry with fatigue and heat. Disjointed, from the last four months of travel up and down the coast, from the disconnection to her other half that doesn’t have to do with this fieldwork.
She flicks the light on and reluctantly slides out of her sleeping bag. A little mousy blob scurries into the corner and vanishes. She creaks over to her suitcase, which is ineffectually blocking the gap at the bottom of the door, and pulls out the book that she bought in the two-dollar shop that afternoon. She gazes at the wispy cover design for a second and then open it up and feasts again. It reminds her of Him. It retells the stories she’s been letting herself consider to be more than just stories, and shows her that what she has been discovering for herself is probably not just her fanciful imagination. There was—is—a man who is trustworthy, puzzling, consistent, complex, kind. Who’s real, alive, who’s interested in her, who is not imagined. She’s seeing changes, in herself, and in the world around her. Others are noticing them too.
She’s been abstinent for nearly twelve months now…but she hardly notices on a day to basis. That’s the miracle. All by itself the thing that strangled every other thought and action has diminished. She’s not that person any more. It’s far away from her and she’s moving towards something very different. She’s finished her degree and has full time work that she loves, but more than that, she has friends, a network, a life that isn’t about escape. She’s confronted mistakes. She’s learned—is learning—to be loving, even when she’s not feeling loved in the same way back.
She has a rock. She has a stable, consistent platform, a foundation within herself. It’s a link to a person– more than a person. It’s perfection itself, and there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do to destroy that. If they tear it down, it never was in the first place. What she hopes for – trusts in – is beyond the realm of destruction, of human misappropriation and weakness. It doesn’t depend on her or anyone else’s actions. But she knows it exists here with her now, because she’s seen evidence of it in herself.
The frog choir starts up again outside. She puts the book down and switches off the light. He’s real. He’s faithful. She sits with him, just sits, and being in his presence is giving her the peace she never had to do things she never thought she would. The mouse rustles along the dusty floor. She slowly puts her earplugs in and drift into sleep.
Metanoia 