Is home where your people are... your family? Then my home is also in multiple locations. With both my step children and their families. Or whatever apartment, in whatever city Rebecca is living in and is willing to let me crash in order to not feel bad about making me a homeless vet. Is home where you spend most of your time? Then it's the barracks on Camp Robinson Arkansas where I set down my suitcases each Sunday night and from which I pack up those same bags, then load them back into my truck for the return drive to Alabama each weekend. Or is the truck itself my home since it's where I keep my most-often-used, common possessions?
Home may not actually exist for me. At the age of 50 I find that fact an unpleasant development and one I never saw coming. I thought I would be settled someplace with a nice, spacious home filled with the comforting bric-brac of a long life accumulated around me. Working in my shop while my wife worked in the kitchen or with her friends. I expected to be visited by shouting, scampering grandchildren and travelling around the country in an RV. Instead I find myself a gypsy, living out of a pair of suitcases and rolling the miles under my wheels each week like some traveling salesman. It is unbearably sad to me.
It felt like my life was a ship. I was the Captain and all my possessions were the cargo. My crew were all my family and passengers were my fiends. My ship did not always sail. In fact I often preferred it lolling at anchor is some calm safe harbor. But one day a storm came, as they often do. My ship was rocked and tossed and the chain holding me fast to the mooring strained, again, as it often had in the past. This time however, the chain broke and the ship of my life was tossed bow to stern, yawing and pitching until it began to founder. With alarming speed the ship began to take on water... debt worries, neglect, alienation of affection, loss of sexual desire, mistrust, resentment, anger... each a wave that washed over the decks and poured through the hatches. Finally my ship sank out from under me. I felt my feet leave the deck for the first time in 20 years. I flailed. I struggled to keep my head above water. I choked and grew exhausted. And, once for a desperate moment, I let my head slip below the waves. Considered letting a gun barrel rest against my temple. Just let go. You're too tired. Too cold. Just let the water pull you down.
But I didn't. Thoughts of the people who still loved me kept me treading water. And eventually I made my way toward land far in the distance. I touched bottom, struggled through the surf and collapsed on the shore of a strange, cold, dreary land all gray and dark and misty. Shivering I crawled off the rocky beach and lurched to my feet swaying and weeping.
It felt like my life was a ship. I was the Captain and all my possessions were the cargo. My crew were all my family and passengers were my fiends. My ship did not always sail. In fact I often preferred it lolling at anchor is some calm safe harbor. But one day a storm came, as they often do. My ship was rocked and tossed and the chain holding me fast to the mooring strained, again, as it often had in the past. This time however, the chain broke and the ship of my life was tossed bow to stern, yawing and pitching until it began to founder. With alarming speed the ship began to take on water... debt worries, neglect, alienation of affection, loss of sexual desire, mistrust, resentment, anger... each a wave that washed over the decks and poured through the hatches. Finally my ship sank out from under me. I felt my feet leave the deck for the first time in 20 years. I flailed. I struggled to keep my head above water. I choked and grew exhausted. And, once for a desperate moment, I let my head slip below the waves. Considered letting a gun barrel rest against my temple. Just let go. You're too tired. Too cold. Just let the water pull you down.
But I didn't. Thoughts of the people who still loved me kept me treading water. And eventually I made my way toward land far in the distance. I touched bottom, struggled through the surf and collapsed on the shore of a strange, cold, dreary land all gray and dark and misty. Shivering I crawled off the rocky beach and lurched to my feet swaying and weeping.
And why? Why did my ship sink. What was so powerful about this particular storm that it sank the ship of my life? Because my partner in life... my Admiral... my wife... opted to take another course. Choosing to follow some undeniable pull in another direction, her midlife crisis carried her away from me. It was a massive tidal wave in the form of adultery. She had become another man's woman. Time will tell if it is the worst or best thing that ever could have happened to me. For now... it seems dark and hopeless. It seems as though the world is no longer vast and the far horizon beckoning. Now it seems the world has grown small and dimly lit. It's like I've wandered off the shore, up over the gritty dunes and found myself at a train station. A long line of grey, dingy passenger cars are lined up at the platform behind a smoking steaming behemoth of a locomotive engine. Hoping it might take me home I climb aboard. The train pulls out yet I do not feel hopeful. I feel as though my destination is an even darker, more hopeless place.
My life now seems like a dismal, grey, and barren rolling landscape viewed through the dirty cracked window of a train coach compartment. I feel as though I have resorted to tapping on the walls to try and reach others in other compartments on that same train. I hear their muffled voices through the walls. I feel the the thumps and scrapes of their movements but, no matter how much I tap, or even pound on the walls I can't get their attention. I wrench the door handle to get out of the compartment. I bang on the door and shout to be let off... to be allowed to go back to where I started but no one comes... the door is locked. I am trapped on this dismal grey train... rolling through some desolate world populated only by other broken, wounded, travelling companions. Heading for some as yet unknown destination. I have even thought of breaking the window and jumping from this train... consequences be damned. Instead I fly around my compartment screaming for someone to let me off... someone to even notice I'm here. I'd settle for the comfort of another traveler to share my fear, pain and loneliness.
My life now seems like a dismal, grey, and barren rolling landscape viewed through the dirty cracked window of a train coach compartment. I feel as though I have resorted to tapping on the walls to try and reach others in other compartments on that same train. I hear their muffled voices through the walls. I feel the the thumps and scrapes of their movements but, no matter how much I tap, or even pound on the walls I can't get their attention. I wrench the door handle to get out of the compartment. I bang on the door and shout to be let off... to be allowed to go back to where I started but no one comes... the door is locked. I am trapped on this dismal grey train... rolling through some desolate world populated only by other broken, wounded, travelling companions. Heading for some as yet unknown destination. I have even thought of breaking the window and jumping from this train... consequences be damned. Instead I fly around my compartment screaming for someone to let me off... someone to even notice I'm here. I'd settle for the comfort of another traveler to share my fear, pain and loneliness.
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