Learning to Walk

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The spring of 2000 came without so much as a warning and I wasn’t ready at all when graduation arrived. It’s amazing how quickly four years can pass, but I did see graduation as the beginning of a time when I could use my new education to do some good. At the time, I was absolutely terrified and found myself confronted by the question: ‘what the f**k do I do now?’ I had lived the last four years of my life sheltered by the relatively quiet atmosphere of college. Now, I was expected to go out and get a job, make a living and face the world with a noble smile. The problem is that the world is not a noble place and jobs are very hard to come by. Even graduates with marketable degrees were finding hard to get work and many of them were forced to settle for work outside their chosen fields. So, where does someone with a degree in philosophy go to find work? The answer? Anywhere they can, and after a few weeks, I took a job in the human service field with an agency here in Bangor. The pay wasn’t very good, but I thought that this might an opportunity to make a difference. I worked as a teacher for the developmentally disabled, but after about three months it dawned on me how naive I could be. I found myself both stunned and disappointed to discover that many of the people who get hired into these jobs are hired out of desperation, as long as they pass a background check. To my shock, I also found that in many instances, the staff tends to have more issues than the people they were there to serve. I still don’t know quite what to expect from people, but I do know that the idea of ‘normal’ is nothing more than a pipe dream.

Once I fell into the routine of the job I started to notice that the staff had divided themselves into cliques. I had experienced this mentality to some degree in college and came to deeply resent it. The idea that someone could have the audacity to think of themselves, or their group, as being better than everyone else sickened me. Sure, it’s all fine and good for high school students to adopt an attitude. After all, people of that age group seem to be rather idiotic, simply by virtue of their youth. However, at some point, one should develop the realization that they are not at the center of the universe. So, if you’re not going to do anything meaningful with your life you should pick up your attitude and step aside. Then a question came to me. If the staff walked around thinking they were so much better than everyone else, what must they think of the people they are paid to serve? I didn’t even want to think about what the answer might be and quickly began to feel that I was not taking the proper direction.

The job was both routine and boring. Sure, once in a while I got the chance to counsel someone who might be on the edge of losing their self-control, but I wasn’t feeling challenged by what I was doing. I also found out that anyone could do this job and the employment opportunities for someone with a degree in philosophy were non-existent. So, while I decided to stick with a job I didn’t like, I also decided that it was time to re-group. I spent weeks looking at colleges online. The thought of going out of state did occur to me, and although my parents would understand they still wouldn’t like me being so far away. I decided to spend the next few months looking at my options. After all, going to grad school is a major investment of both time and money and I wanted to be certain about the field of study I was going to apply for. But one thing was certain, I had to move on. Working with the disabled seemed to be a good idea at the time, but there was no real future in it and most people who worked in this industry eventually went back to school anyway.

As fall arrived, that feeling of being out of place became magnified by the desire to go back to school. I thrived on knowledge and missed the academic atmosphere. Reading literature or philosophy gave me a great deal more pleasure than the idea of burying myself in a novel. I never saw that there was anything to learn by immersing myself in someone else’s fantasy world. What I wanted was to grow, not to withdraw. Life will never come to you. You have to pursue it. So, I started ordering a few books online. I suppose I was also looking for things that could take me away from my job. It seemed to work, most of the time. In November, I took the GRE at the University at Bangor. Unless I did well, I would never be considered. So basically, grad school was my only hope of not only getting a good job, but also finding some direction, a way to make a real contribution. There would always be people to care for the disabled. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t care, I'm just looking for something that I can uniquely fit into and still be able to do my part.

I arrived at the campus early. There were a few familiar faces, mostly professors. It was an all-day event. But, as exhausted as I was by the end of the day, I walked away with the distinct feeling that I had scored high enough to ensure my acceptance. Two agonizing weeks later, I received a letter from the university. As I suspected, my GRE scores were more than sufficient and were made part of my graduate application. By this time, I had decided on a program of study and the university accepted me to their Master’s program in social work. I’d be able to work in any part of the country, even become a licensed social worker and open a practice somewhere. I felt like I was on top of the world, finally finding my path - my calling if you will. I’d get to help people who had real problems without having the headache of state funded sheltered workshops or day treatment facilities. These would be people whose situations threw them to the wolves - people with psych issues, marital problems, and addictions. The state was obligated to care for the disabled, but the people I’d deal with would be lost without someone to help them make sense of their lives.

Winter came with a vengeance and Bangor lies far enough from the coast that we manage to avoid storms coming in from the ocean. But, nor’easters always came up from the mid-west and by the time they got here they were monsters. Places like Portland seemed to dodge the bullet most of the time. Even though it was on the coast, most of the bad weather just seemed to go around it. A few years ago, a Nor’easter blew its way up the coast, slamming into the entire state. The power was out for days and many people in northern Maine were in the dark for up to three weeks. Without power, Bangor had become a ghost town overnight. The storm was so ferocious that the wind began to sound like wolves howling at the winter moon. Most people hated winter, but I found something in its icy solitude - the blizzards, the long nights, the feeling that, under the right conditions, the entire city could go black at any time. For me, winter brought an intensity and anticipation that nothing else could even come close to. One night, the frozen snowy earth would be blanketed in silence under a clear moonless sky. On another, the earth would tremble in fear as the persistent roar of a fierce winter onslaught approached. Winter in Bangor offered no mercy and would not be tamed, even by God himself.

But as much as I enjoyed winter, spring was always a welcomed reprieve and this spring was certainly no exception. As winter held the earth in its dark, icy grasp, spring would force open its frozen grip and breathe new life back into the landscape. In Maine, it is well-known that there are, in fact, five seasons - summer, autumn, winter, spring, and mud. With all the snow that came with winter, rain and flooding would soon follow, and we were now right in the middle of mud season.

Aside from the mud and rain, a noticeable chill remained in the air until almost the beginning of June. For me, summer didn’t really get underway until the first thunderstorm and, a summer without at least two was a huge disappointment. A good thunderstorm brought the same intensity as a blizzard - the way the sky opened up; the sight of lightning as it seemed to split the air and nothing's better than a thunderstorm at night. If there was a good chance that a storm was on its way, I’d stay up late listening to the thunder and watching flashes of lightning fill the night sky. The heat, however, was a different matter. For as long as I can remember, I never had much of a tolerance for the heat and sleeping in the summer was all but impossible. This summer brought a different feeling, dragging by as I anticipated going back to school. As with most things, waiting was the hardest part.