Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [89]
As the weeks passed, then the months, I developed a daily routine. Went to work each day on my bicycle and rode the five miles home each night, in every kind of weather. The factory was my only social outlet, and I made a few friends there. Good guys. Decent guys. They were my age or younger, and all of them were married. But outside of work, we rarely socialized. They attempted to include me a few times, and I accepted now and then, but mostly, their social groups held little appeal. So I had a lot of time to kill on my own.
Around the farm, I helped Phillip and Fannie with their chores each night and chatted with them about their day and mine. It was all pretty idyllic.
And stifling.
I immersed myself in books. Each night I read and read in the flickering flame of the oil lamp in my bedroom.
And slowly, slowly, the truth seeped into my brain. It was not working. I had probably realized that fact long before admitting it to myself. I was stuck in a deadly dull routine. And there seemed no way it would ever improve. I simply could not do it. Could not fit in. The northern Indiana Amish were unassuming; good-natured; and unlike me, utterly content within the confines of their community and their world.
I loved these people. They were the salt of the earth and would have done anything for me. They wanted me to make it, to succeed there. They wanted me as a part of their church and their community. I appreciated that then. I still do.
But we simply could not connect beyond a certain intellectual point. Not that they were stupid. They weren’t. It’s just that, well, their world was not mine. It was not like any I had ever known. And when we were together, bantering and talking, I sometimes felt as if I simply could not take it anymore. I couldn’t take one more breathless tale of whose cow broke through the fence and got out on the road. Who ran his bicycle into the ditch and broke his leg. Whose horse ran away and crashed the buggy into a car. Not one more story of who said what and who did what and wasn’t it all just awful?
In time, their perceived faults accumulated in my mind and rankled me deeply. I recoiled instinctively from the provincial banality of my surroundings. And, sadly, I even recoiled from my good-hearted friends. I began to see them as uncouth and couldn’t stand their hard, mirthless laughter at some silly, utterly senseless joke. Their smug, deliberate ignorance.
And from there, it was only a matter of time until I realized it was all in vain. All my efforts. All my plans. Utter failures. These kind, simple people were not my people and would never be. The mad bishop had been right. I could not make it here. I would not make it here. I could not stay.
I had exerted so much effort and invested so much time in this last attempt. Always, I really had believed that in some vague and distant future, everything would work out. Always I had faith there would be rest from the weary road just ahead. A peaceful place of green pastures, where I would see and be satisfied and content to live in quietness and peace as an Amish man.
But that vague and distant future, where it would all work out, had arrived. And it wasn’t working out. The whole thing had been a figment of my mind, of my hopes, of my imagination. It had been long and arduous, this latest journey of return. So much time. So many miles. And now it was crumpling. All that effort, for nothing.
I could no longer ignore the brutal truth of my circumstances. And dull panic stirred inside me, because I knew that if I left this time, there would be no return. This time would be the last time. This time, I would be admitting to all the world that I was lost, with no hope of ever attaining salvation. This time, it would be over.
Forever.
As the realization set in, I sank into quiet, desperate despair. I became depressed, silent, and brooding, with no one in whom to confide.