Overdue Forgiveness

There is a particular kind of alchemy in it.

Dickinson's "certain slant of light" that plays on my brain chemistry and makes it difficult to keep thoughts in my head, to enjoy the things I normally do like...
being with other humans.
Or cupcakes.
Or living, instead of merely existing and waiting for this invisible weight to lift.

I feel it take hold on inhospitable nights - during this part of the year especially. Daytime is easier, though the grey, the cold, and the lack of sunlight conspire to make the task of living exponentially harder than it needs to be. An anxious person by nature, my proclivities morph into profound difficulties during the winter months.

On nights a lot like this one, as I am just settling in to sleep, I would fixate on some of my worst sins. You know, the ones that feel like the cut against the grain of humanity's goodness. The ones that are proof, absolute and irrefutable, of my failure to be a good human.

There are two.
The first: a pile of plastic bags, roughly 2 feet tall, mounded in the corner of my kitchen.
The second: six overdue library books.

My unrelenting shame.

I know, I know. It's okay to laugh. When I told my closest friends about these things, they laughed, saying

"Oh Hannah. Wow. That is so...so very you."

And they are right. It's very on brand for me - a fairly vanilla, straight-edge, inside-the-lines person. And yet, I will say what I am sure you or your loved ones probably already know.

If and when your brain chooses to fixate on something, to haunt you, to mark it down and dog your steps even though the real "you" knows better, there is little humor in it at the time.

So small things turn into this. When I don’t have the benefit, the buffer, of other people, the plastic bags are my company. A corner completely swollen and spilling over with countless plastic bags. It is this corner, the one filled with plastic grocery bags from at least the past few years, which I agonize over. Which I go to sleep stress-angsting about. It is my corner of the climate crisis. Each one a mocking failure. I would feel better if I took them to the bag recycling at Schnucks, but any time I approach, I am rooted to the spot by the weight of my repeated shortcomings. To make a better choice. To remember the reusable bags. To lower my demand for things. Maybe that bag once contained the fresh produce I so optimistically bought and then failed to use before it went bad.

Everything turns to ash. So the plastic bags stay.

But worse than the bags - the overdue library books.

An interlude:

Friends, I am a lover of the library. When I walk into libraries, I am overwhelmed with the beauty they represent. With the knowledge sharing, the public service, the STORieS they contain. Even the smallest library holds more than my feeble life could ever hope to take in. I am more reverent about libraries than I am about churches and friends, I happen to be a pastor's wife. I worked my way through college at our campus library.

And...I didn't set foot in a library for more than three years. That's how long those books were overdue. Three. Years. Six books. Five board books, checked out for my child. One of which ironically titled, Don’t Get Lost, Odysseus! [Sorry Odie.]

And one, just one, for me.

On nights like this one as I tried to go to sleep I would picture each one of those books. For three years I knew where they were in my house. I knew, too, that the fact I hadn't returned them was proof that I was a fraud, a sham, a person incapable and unworthy of the good things present in my life. If the plastic bags took me to a bad place, the library books took me to a headspace largely without sound, without words. In that place, I was a huddled mass. Cold. Insignificant. Powerless. Helpless. Undeserving of good things, no matter how freely given. And the books were the proof.

For three years I avoided the places that brought me the most joy and transcendence because they felt off limits. I didn't deserve to be in them. Even while otherwise healthy, the whiff of a thought of going to the library set off deep patterns of avoidance in me. And that might be fine except that I am a writer and a researcher and...libraries are kind of necessary for that part, too.

Until one fateful day when, in the course of my daily public radio listening I heard that the library systems in St. Louis were now fine-free, and I might be able to clear my account for a lot less money.

I woke up on a Monday and could feel within myself that today I was healthy enough to deal with this. This day, even though for three years I could not - I could round up those books and take them back and deal with the massive shame monster that would come with it. I sat in the parking lot outside the branch, took a deep breath and vowed not to weep on the poor circulation librarian.

I walked up to the clerk with my stack and breathlessly spilled out-

"Hi I'd really like to reactivate my account and I have these to return but I'm sure they've been marked in the system as lost but I have the money to cover it and I understand if there are fees you need it's not a problem."

The clerk blinked and said "Yeah, so as you've probably heard we're a fine free system now..." I interrupted, whistling and splurting like a tea kettle about to boil over. "I know, but as you're about to see these have been gone for a long time, so I'm sure you've already purchased replacements. I can pay you for them..."

"No," he interrupted back. "So there aren't any fines now, but even if there were...you brought the books back in good condition. If you do that, you don't have to pay the lost fee. That part has always been true. So, your account is free and open."

That part has always been true. Your account is free and open.

Friends, I died. The weight I've been waiting to lift dissolved. I stood at a computer bank, updating my address on the form for a new library card and watched as layers of shame, struggle, and illness sloughed off me and pooled around my feet.

When I returned my paperwork to the desk, the other circulation clerk was saying to another patron in my same predicament, "We found out that a lot of people were staying away, so we eliminated the fees. We want everybody to know they can always come back here. All we want you do to is enjoy what is here."

And here, I broke the vow I'd made to myself moments ago. I wept in front of that poor desk clerk. He was deeply nonplussed because in case you didn't know, public librarians have seen some shit.

So now, for many months, rather than fixate on the bags and the books - I have been reading before bed. Rather than starve myself out of an ill-contrived sense of penance, I’ve feasted on the big stories I crave.

And when I find myself floating again in that dark gray place, unmoored from myself, a new voice cuts through the fog. Not Emily Dickinson, not a former mentor, not the soundscapes of comforting places of my past.

Instead, the clarion call comes from the throat of a tired but kind circulation librarian.

"This part has always been true. Your account is free and open. All we want you to do is enjoy what is here."