This is a strange summer.  I’m on the brink of a new life, while the old life still clings to me like a wart.    My not necessarily chosen profession has kept my life chaotic.  And my home life… between homelessness, hope and homelessness again has kept me on my toes. 

I am moved into my new home.  There is a certain peace and serenity I feel when walking in my door that I have never felt before in any house I have ever lived.  To some degree, everyone feels that when the go home to mom and dad’s.  But this is different.  A calm washes over me as soon as I step out of my car.  My job has been stressful and chaotic to say the least.  But, I think everyone goes through that.  I tough it out and take it all in stride.  it’s all I can do.  Some days, yes, the world is frustrating. 

Today was no different.  Well, yes it was different.  My boss/supervisor guy who kinda oversees my location but has nothing to do with me since I am a contractor for the company got fired/quit.  It was a sigh of relief for many people involved.  Yet sad at the same time.  As I dealt with my onflux of customers, today, I had my first line termination due to death.  These two old ladies approach me, with papers in their hands, to terminate their mother’s line for she had passed away last week.

Now, I am a technician, and a care rep at a major wireless provider.  It’s my day job.  It pays the bills.  I essentially am the complaint department, 90% of the time.  It’s my job to listen to people’s problems and make their phones work for them again.  It seems easy enough, but it can wear on you after a while.  There is a constant state of on the edge of being yelled at by someone who is unhappy.  they aren’t necessarily mad at me but frustrated with the rest of their lives and I happen to be the sounding board for them to vent their frustrations.  It’s a strange state to be in. 

What people don’t realize is how personal this really is.  This stuff will eat away at you and you slowly become numb to it.  Not because you want to.  Because you have to.  But, when you become numb and grow weary at this, you can also lose sight of what’s important.  It’s not the cell phones that are important.  it is the lives surrounding that device.  Now, I don’t care.  I am numb to it.  And your problems are your problems, not mine, but I will do my best to ease your pain. 

Terminating the line of a deceased loved one isn’t fun.

The other part of this job that is just almost unbearable is the fact that I am near a military base where there is a constant influx of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.  AS well is a constant flow of those terminating their lines because they are shipping out to Afghanistan and Iraq, or Germany, or Korea… all over the world.  It becomes VERY personal.  Sometimes, I am the first face some of these young men see when they return to the States.  They have to turn their phones on and get them working before they can even call and take their gear home.  They need the phone to make the call to get the housing they need to live here.  It makes it VERY personal to us.  I’ve seen a number of injuries.  A number of ragged and weary faces on mere children who have no right to be doing what they are doing.  They are young.  And I mean YOUNG.  They fight because they are told to fight and that’s what their job is.  It’s a thankless job of danger and uncertainty. 

Not only do I see these men BOYS coming to hurry up and get on with their lives.  I see them two weeks later when “That bitch took my shit and left me” I see WAAAAY too much.  It’s tough to comprehend the heartache.  But when you see it face to face in the anger and loss in the eyes of these kids, it’s heartbreaking. 

And then… I see them again when they are off again.

It’s a shitty way to be.  It makes the world a lot smaller and it brings the war that much closer to home to me.  Bring the boys back home.  They don’t need to be there.  This has been going on for seven years now.  Enough is enough.

So I see these faces and I realize, my job ain’t so bad after all.

It adds to the strain.  It adds a great deal of stress to an already stressful job.

Yet, here I am.

I return home.  Back to my waterfall.  I walk through the door and the breeze catches me in the face.  I take a deep breath and smell the water and the air and the old musty smell that the bathroom carpet is giving off, and it smells like home.

I walk through the house and crack the screen door open.  My dog prances and bounces around me.  Happy, joyed to see me.  She charges through the back door with me.  I stand at the back deck and stare at the waterfalls below.  I turn and look at the dog and smile.  She’s got her head back.  Her nose in the air and she’s doing the same as me.  Relaxing int he chill of the summer air with the waterfall right there to soothe us and bring us down.  She’s stopping to smell the flowers… which I actually saw her do the other day.  Running along the creek, and screeching to a halt to sniff the bright pink flower that was whizzing past her head.  After a long sniff, she was off again.

And that is why I come home at night.

… plus my woman is upstairs snoring her little head off.

…at 5pm.