What Is, and What Should Never Be

It’s that time of the year when the days are short, and the hours of darkness are long. With those long hours, also comes the cold weather tag-teaming like a mother fucker your physical state of "it’s too cold to do that" while simultaneously wreaking havoc on your mental well being where every day starts to feel like a, "I want to be emo today"…day.

No? Just me?

Fuck.

It has been a very quiet few months lately. Work is just that. Work. Really not a whole lot more, and even less of a whole lot less. It’s changing though. It already has started to. Come January, I’ll be running my own section. As of 1 Jan, I will have officially sewn on the next rank and since the actual guy in charge will be leaving on a deployment for the rest of the time I am here, well, that puts me in charge for the next four months. But, it’s already started to happen. He’s off taking care of things and that leaves me to do with tweedle dee and tweedle dum in the other office and to make sure they are doing what they need to. It’s not a bad step up. I’ll be responsible for three people, and a semi fourth who doesn’t technically work for us, but is just assigned to us, but even he is leaving soon which might mean that I have to take on his role in the shop as well, which is yet another job that is not my actual job that I’ll have to learn. Brilliant!

But, before all that, it’s time for some time off. Around the end of September, beginning of October, I got a wild hair up my ass about taking a trip somewhere before I ultimately head back to the States in May. So, on a semi-whim, I asked for, got approved, bought airline tickets and reserved a hotel room for a trip to the Philippines that leaves next Friday. For just over two weeks I can relax, hang out in good weather, see some people that I know are still around there and I can put this whole life behind for just a little while. I’m bored here. Everyday is the same it seems. It’s get up, go to work, come home, catch up on my shows, go to sleep. Rinse. Re-fucking-peat. My time here was supposed to be great. I mean, I’ve done some cool things and seen a lot of stuff that billions of people will never see, but it’s hard to say that without a doubt, this tour here has been…a failure. My reintroduction into the civilized world after two years in Korea and Diego Garcia, respectively, have been nothing but a series of let downs, one after the other. I like the country and all, but I don’t think the two of us have ever seen eye to eye.

So, it’s time to move on. For now, since I have to be here until May, it’s for a little trip to a place far away, where I am not going to run into anyone I know (save said people that I brisked over earlier) that people from work are not going to contact me and where I can just not give a fuck for a change.

And yet, before that can happen, I have to deal with now. I’m at now, now. What happened to then? We missed it. When? Just now. The now of which I speak is yet another Friday, just sitting here, with nothing to do. Part saving for my trip, part not having a single damn person I can call up. That’s sad. But, that’s me. And in my state of nothing to do, there was a picture I saw, due in large to my mom commenting on it, since Facebook thinks a recent reply to something is worthy to put up as a recent story, of someone announcing they were having a second kid. And it sucked. Not because she was having another kid, I’ve sworn off wanting to have my own…devil spawn if you ask me, but she was…that girl.

A little back story. We have known each other since we were about 12 and 13 years respectively. She is a year older than I. Well, to make a long story short, we were never in the right place at the right time to ever have a relationship. Everything else seemed to line up perfectly, with me just so happening to be in town when her prom was and I went with her and it just seemed like it was meant to be. Eventually. It was a definitely a castle made of sand though, as she eventually went off to college, and I joined the Air Force. It had been a couple years between the times we saw each other, and one of the last times she had made mention of an on again, off again boyfriend. Didn’t pay much attention, mostly because I was going through this weird phase of not physically being able to stay up past like 9pm. It was like I was iron deficient or something. So I had crashed at her parent’s house (I was driving from West Virginia back to NC) for the night and the next morning I was off back to my current home. Fast forward nine months later, I get a message on MySpace (yes, that long ago) that she had something to tell me but I couldn’t make contact with her because we had all communications cut off in Iraq for a short while. Whenever I got home, I called her up and that’s when she told me she was getting married. My exact words, and I’ll probably never forget this, were "What the hell?". Yep, I said no congratulations or anything, just a question and well, maybe a congrats or something. But, I remember it sucked to hear that. A lot. While I was in Iraq, I had a lot of time to think.  And one thing I thought about a lot, was that it was time to get things in order. To get married, start a life with someone, have that support net for times when my job sucks, and for me to provide the same. And I wanted it to be her at the time. I probably would have killed her father off long ago and be in prison right now, but, still. I could have made it work.  I remember she asked if I would come to her wedding and I played the "I’ll be in Korea" card. But I doubt I would have gone regardless.

So much for a short story.

So, that’s where I am at with these colder days and longer nights. Sitting at home pondering what is and what should never be.