Full Moon

I have always made references to how insane people act during the full moon. Anyone who has ever worked with the public can tell you that during a full moon, the crazies come out of thier shells. Thankfully I do not have to interact with the public on a day to day basis. I have little patience for dealing with irrate individuals that want to blame me for everything going wrong in their lives.
All this to say that I can now tell how the full moon seems to affect me. I have realized that during the full moon phase, my creative juices start to flow and the urge to keep working on my manuscript comes back to me. My mom actually asked for me to bring her a copy of my book before she passed away. I wish that I had taken the time to print it out. It was odd that she requested to read it, because I had not mentioned it to her in a long time. Odder still, when she asked to read it, a light bulb went off in my head that she was getting close to dying.
I graduated from college in 1999 and moved straight to New Orleans to work. One would think that a new grad would be itching to enter the party lifestyle and New Orleans would be the place to do just that. My experience in NOLA was not good. I missed my parents, my home state, and my friends. I detested the smell of the city that I thought I loved, and felt an eerie sense of darkness everywhere there. I wasn't just suffering from "girl from a small town syndrome" because I had also lived in New York, and New Orleans was like another world. Before moving to New Orleans, I loved the city's mysteries, the history of voodoo and most of all my all time favorite author Anne Rice. Living in the famed city as an outsider, not a native, was a whole different ballgame than just being a tourist. I met some interesting individuals though, and there are times that I want to go back and visit with my husband in tow. I want to show him the little wonder spots I found scattered around the District and the historical sites of the city. I digress, my point is that I went to one of the biggest party places in the US and hardly had fun at all. I ended up moving back home after 6 months. I moved in with my mother because I was worried about her drinking. I was only able to take living with her for two months before I left there and moved in with my dad and stepmom. Then I started driving back and forth to hang out with friends in Birmingham. It was during this time that I met the love of my life and have been married to him for almost 10 years!
The full moon makes me feel reckless. I had reckless moments in between my move from Gadsden to Birmingham. I look back now and know that I was mad at my mom for trying to drink herself to death. I was only 22 and had the world at my feet, but I ran from it instead of embracing it. For about four months I lived night to night, drink to drink, dance to dance with my girlfriends. I fell in a gutter in downtown Birmingham, and almost lost my Steve Madden shoe. I drank a bottle of wine by myself before going out at night and could shoot tequila better than any man in the bar. I ran every day, hang over or not, and was in the best shape of my life. What I didn't know was that I was in pain,and no running or drinking could help me. It wasn't until I met my husband and started going back to church that the pain dissipated. All during college and for the year after I had graduated I had held God back at an arms length. I prayed to Him daily but would not give in to His silent urging for me to come back to him. I tried to hide, but He found me. I can still remember the night that my dad called me to tell me that they had found my mom unconcious in her kitchen, blood everywhere from where she had cut herself in a drunken stupor. "You have to come home," my stepmom told me on the phone. I was standing in the parking lot of a local bar, getting ready to go inside with my friends. I told her that I would be there tomorrow and hung up. I closed my mind, and my heart that night and walked into that bar with my head held high and a twenty dollar bill in my hand and bought a round of shots for my friends. Later that night I ran from our apartment to the tennis courts and sat in the dark with a beer bottle and wept. I laid myself flat on the court and screamed to God. I asked him "Why??" "Why me? Why now?". I don't know how long I had been there when I heard my friends yelling for me. They were worried because they didn't know where I had gone. I was trying to escape everything, and I had no idea that what I needed was right there with me. God gave me and my mother another ten years after that. I was baptized that same year and have not been the same person who laid on that tennis court since. However, there are nights like tonight, with the moon full, that I feel the pull of restlessness. Thank the good Lord, that I belong completely to Him and know that He alone can calm the storm within. My prayer is that everyone can come to know His grace as I do. There are so many souls in this world who are desparate for solace. I pray that they let God into their hearts. I pray that they open their hearts and mind completely to Him, and that they will no longer suffer.