Resolution

Joanna* enters the urgent care clinic and pauses to survey her surroundings. The waiting room is dimly lit and sparsely populated. The matted carpet has more stories to tell than any library and she's certain there are no magazines within 4 years of the current year.

Her health teeters back and forth between marginal and undernourished. She is five months pregnant and understands she needs to make decisions in the best interest of her child. It is difficult finding a ride from the shelter to her appointments. Everything in her life seems accelerated and wishes time could be reversed and permit her to make different decisions.

Outside, the torrential downpour relents for a few minutes and she watches the water collect in slow-forming drips on the end of her umbrella. Methodically, they bombard the carpet in a steady rhythm as she sits and waits for her name to be called. Raising a child alone will be daunting and her lack of a support network exacerbates an already inflamed situation. As the abuse grew more frequent, she needed to make a choice between being housed and in jeopardy or becoming homeless but safe. One day everything would calm down and she would get her bearings.

But that day had not yet arrived.

Joanna kept a faint smile pursed on her lips and avoided eye contact. And while no one else in the room judged her, she was her own constant critic. She used to believe in fate and destiny and all the trimmings that accompanied a million other sunny dispositions. But as the events of the past 2 weeks unfolded, she wasn't sure about anything, anymore. Her only certainty was the notion that she had little to count on. Her parents told her not to get involved with him and cut her off as soon as she got pregnant. At 19 years old, she felt much older.

All of her possessions were at his place but she knew better than to try and retrieve them. She burned every bridge by sneaking out in the middle of the night. And she knew he was honestly relieved when she left because he wanted all the benefits of a grown up relationship but none of the responsibilities. The abuse began shortly after she presented him with a cigar and the news.

The shelter had family housing and told her she could stay until after the baby was born and Joanna could get back on her feet. But with only a GED, it would prove challenging to find work that could sustain her and the child. And she felt like an absolute failure for bringing a baby into the world, straight to a homeless shelter. The odds were stacked against her but she knew she could still write her own story. And just before her name was called for her checkup, her eyes caught a glimpse of a quote in a tattered and worn out paperback she had been skimming through while she waited:

“And for all his life it would be kindness and love that made him cry, never pain or persecution, which on the contrary only reinforced his spirit and his resolution.”

She smiled an authentic grin, closed the book, and then stepped into the rest of her life.

*Not her real name