Thorns

Sometimes, everything here feels wrong. The plants are all so sharp. When I walk the trails to the reservoir, the spring winds blow sand into my eyes and my feet still slip and slide over the shifting dirt and I tramp through plants that leave me swearing in pain as they attach themselves to any exposed bit of soft fabric or skin.
The effort it takes for all of us to survive out here is not lost on me.
I feel for these plants, in their mindless effort to leave some mark on this world, even as I curse them and pull their thorny spikes from my continually scratched and bloody calves and palms.
It feels like work to live here.
It's rained once since I got here, and despite that, the reservoir seems to be ever more loosely contained by its banks and so even though I have walked the same paths for weeks, I'll occasionally find myself suddenly unmoored, looking around for a familiar scrub brush or boulder (spoiler alert: they mostly look the same to me) because the water has overtaken yet another path and forced me to tramp through yet more spiky, desperate plants and when I finally lift my sweaty head it is only to realize, yep, I'm lost again.

My car is on its last legs, a cruel joke I feel the universe is levying against me while I am 2,500 miles from all my worldly possessions and my former home and my school to which I must return in order to graduate and pass an enormously expensive test to be given the papers which legitimize this thing I've worked so hard to become.
I skim an email from FedLoan Services while I speak on the phone with the mechanic. He tells me this next repair will be around $100 (the last was $500), but that my car will probably not last another six months. He recommends I start looking for a new car. I make noncommital noises of agreement while I try not to tally the amount of money I and my parents have poured into this car in the last year.
FedLoan Services encourages me to perform my exit interview for the loans I have received so that I may know my "total loan commitment" and begin preparations for paying back the more than six figures I borrowed.
I sip on a $4 cup of coffee that I bought in order to use the free wi-fi that doesn't extend to the reservation, and I am awash in the irony of the entire situation. It's so funny that I fight back tears and when I shift position, something unbearably sharp digs into my foot and I gasp. I reach down and pull a thorn out of my shoe and leave behind a flaming red spot of blood on my heel.

I think that I've learned to stop expecting things to be a certain way, but then I find myself exhausted by the seemingly endless labor a woman who is having her fifth baby endures. There are no guarantees, I tell myself while she shifts positions one more time, and I tell her, again, that I believe in her and that she can do this, and in my head, I ask God to please, for the love of all your creation, turn this baby face-down. She stands, and cries, and I rub her shoulders. She tries to pee, again, and I hand her ice water for a small sip. She sways, and cries some more, and I press hard into the small of her back, and it's been long enough that I need to call the doctor if we're no closer. She lays down, I check her again, I'm losing faith. She pushes twice more, the baby has turned and comes surging out, yelling on a wave of meconium-stained fluid and reaching, reaching for her mama and I am grateful, all over again, for this crazy place and this crazy job, and for the moments that make me forget the shambles my life feels like it's become.