How to Let a Summer Go

Here is an essay I wrote an an undergrad.  I was often obsessed with how to let things go, as I as in AA, and trying to work both the program's steps and suggestions.

How to Let a Summer Go

"The days are bright and free, bright and free."  -Jane Kenyon

Start early, at the beginning of August.  You will know it is the right time, as you will being to feel the kind of anxiety so acutely that you cannot eat, cannot sleep.  Go running every night so you will not have to sit with the pain.  Wear a tank tops, shorts; pull your hair into a long ponytail if it's long.  Forget stretching, and just run.  Run down the dirt road until you get to the stop sign, then go left.  You will pa run past a Christmas tree farm, a pond, horses, a cornfield, and an apple orchard.  Fireflies will light the way.  They are no gone yet.  Run until you can barely breathe, then run faster.  Think about how your mother;s friend, Ed, had an affair with a twenty-two year old woman, and was thus alienated by his friends.  H trained for the Boston Marathon a a means to deal with the isolation.  Go five, six , seven miles, make sure you run right through the pain. 

(Unfinished, but saved and posted)

I adored this poet, Jane Kenyon when I was a young woman.  You saw her books of poetry everywhere, as she had just passed away.  I even used to go listen to Donald Hall read her poetry.  I craved her.  I almost went to her grave, but then did not, but fantasized about leaving her the one sand dollar I'd found in my lifetime.  She wrote with astounding articulation about the tyranny of melancholy.  At this time in my life, I needed a working anti-depressant; however I was thick into AA, believing I needed to be "squeaky clean" to be any sot of success.  I thought my success would buy me a head seat at the community of AA's table.  I thought wrong, so wrong.  FTG, in some ways, became my new Jane Kenyon while I was reading the S.T. blog; ultimately, I need to find a Jane Kenyon or ftg in myself.