The Gray Waiting Room

Waiting rooms can be places of anticipation, of fear, of boredom, of detachment.
The gray waiting room, with mere sadows pacing back and forth offers little joy. Looking out the window for a glimmer of beauty I see only gray clouds, no sunlight or signs of life to distract me. Distraction, that is the order of the day.

I move to another waiting room some days, this one is beige. There are a few distractions here; a joke, a smile, meaningless banter. Between these rooms, I search for signs of life beyond the walls,but those here with me seem to have found their home here. Even their dress reflects the monotone palate of the space. They are here and they aren't going anywhere.

I come to this place in the shadow of darkness and leave after the sparse rays of light have gone. My hours are good, much more limited than I have ever had before, but the weariness I feel seems to lengthen my days and steal my time away from this place.

I have been working here for a month now. I paint on a smile like a warrior puts on camouflage; just part of the uniform. I am good at my job, but I always am. My heart is not here though, it is too busy doing somersaults inside my chest. Watching the parade of sick old men come through my office affects me in ways I never expected.

I have never been squeamish before. I spent time in the hospital in Mosul, Iraq. Never was I taken aback or nauseated. The young wounded and ill, my brothers and sisters, they did not frighten me. The deteriorating lives I see on the wards and the infectous disease warnings that flash across my computer screen make my stomach jump. My compassion is stronger than my reservations, I touch the patients- a reassuring hug or pat on the shoulder, but this is always followed by a large dose of hand sanitizer when I am back in the confines of my little office.

I help them as best I can, but in a large bureaucratic organization, I am just one tiny piece of the machine. Reading the files I am filled with sorrow and rage as I read about men who destroyed themselves and who were destroyed by others. My job is not hard but it is heavy. I am just so tired.

I built my new life this year on the knowledge that your job does not define you, that life can be lived around your 9-5. I am struggling though. I need the life, the beauty, the hope that springs from my pretty past-times, but the gray exhaustion has consumed some of that. I find it hard to come home sometimes. I work a second job, make plans and go out, the gray exhaustion waits for me when I enter my apartment, throwing me into bed and pinning me down for anxious sleep.

My glimmer, my shining star on the horizon is starting school at NYU in January. Yesterday, as the impatient admissions aid told me that I had been wait listed, I felt my heart drop into my stomach and I felt my hands begin to shake slightly. For some reason, through all the little sorrows of the last few months, tears have not come for me, and yesterday was no different. How I long for tears, but my eyes are like deserts, instead re-routing all the anxieties in my life to the pit of my stomach.

Wait listed is not a no, I know that. I need this so badly though, I want to cling to it like a life raft when the gray walls begin to close in on me! I need a place in my life where intellect, creativity and passion can take me out of this waiting room, help me soar above it and see it as merely a tiny piece of my world, not the hulking megalith that stands before me now. But it is not a no. I will move forward as though it WILL happen. There is always a sweetness to painful longing, it is the knowledge that you have found something to desperately desire, kind of like being in love.

Perhaps it is not the room but the season. Winter is a gray bitch indeed. For now I will cling to my sweet distractions, continue to paint-on a smile and pray for the warm sun of springs yet to come.