It's a Wonderful Life

Things I have learned this week:

1. Kmart is still ghetto. My weekend project was redoing my bedroom closet to accommodate my ever-growing collection of clothing and shoes, along with the assorted pieces of this-and-that from my previous life as an almost-wife.

I decide to go to K-mart because it's on my way back from Miami Dolphins training camp. This K-mart and I have history, and it's not a good one. Last year, my less than 3 month old Honda Civic 2006 got rear-ended in this parking lot by some geriatric gentleman that decided to reverse the wrong way. But it makes sense to get this errand done, since I am in the neighborhood, after all. And after my 400+ mile commute during the work week, I try to consolidate my weekend errands and travels.

I grab the lone cart left by the front door and quickly make my way over to the housewares. In no time, I have found what I need, calculated the cost, and added it to my cart. I wouldn't say the store was overly busy. I'd be more inclined to say that the lack of carts was due to employee laziness -- who wants to go fishing for carts in 110 degree heat? My closet organizers in my cart, I wheel around the aisle to where the grills are because I have been dying to get a little indoor george foreman like grill so I can start eating a little healthier. I spot what I want, add it to my cart and I almost feel proud of myself for the amount of time I have saved inside this store. Before I take my mental bow, I leave my cart and mosey over a couple aisles away to check out something else and when I return to where I left my cart. . . it's gone. Yes, gone. G-O-N-E-gone.

Who does this? Who takes someone's stuff out and takes off with their cart? I mean, REALLY???


2. Working hard will get you no where but just really tired. I am a naturally driven person and I will put 125% into most any task undertaken. Call it perfectionism, call it obsessive-compulsive. Call it what you may, but I've been reminded once again that, sometimes, it's just plain stupid. While there are parts of this new job that I do love, there are some huge components missing that would make it an ideal fit. With any job, there are ups and downs, goods and bads, but for me, I handle my work environment like I handle my relationships. I have boundaries, I have deal breakers. If you don't have any of these, you get walked all over. You give too much, you get taken for granted. And you get tired. Very, very tired.

Working until 7 or 8 o'clock is no problem. Every once in a while. But when it's three nights a week and I commute an hour and fifteen minutes in the morning and 45 minutes at night -- its a problem. By the time I get home and unwind, it's 10:30pm. I have no time for myself, no time for my dog... I should actually consider myself lucky I don't have a love life because this job would end it for sure.

And still, all of these things would be fine... if I really loved the company. If they cared or treated me like they did. But there's too many jobs for too few Indians and the big chief is too busy to pay attention to the details. So what happens is things like what happened on Friday evening -- a meeting we had at 6:30pm, mind you, when we should have already been on our way home. In this meeting, I received information that should have been given to me the first day or the first week I worked there -- not five weeks into my position. Totally absurd. Disorganized. All this tells me after one month is that it won't get any better -- it will only get worse. And maybe I will do some cool pieces here and there and build a portfolio but, you know what, I figured out this weekend that no one cares. It's all about production, cranking out the work. I've always been attracted to agencies and always wanted to work for one. I am enjoying the new experience and the people that I work with there. But does it make it all worth the crappy commute, the organized chaos, and not to mention, a five-pound stress-related weight gain? That's left to be determined. . .

3. It's a wonderful life. As I drove home late last Monday night, I had the beginnings of a thought that followed me through a long week. I was on the phone with a friend, the wife of a good friend of my almost-husband. We were catching up on life when she asked me if I had heard from him and she had heard he's in Alaska safe and sound. That's great, I'd said. But honestly, I just don't care anymore. She doesn't blame me, she understands; she knows what most military wives have come to know -- that the silence is the most normal yet the most difficult part. She understands, she says, but from her own experience, she knows that once you love like that, it's hard to completely let it go.

The truth was that I have started to mentally move on -- he isn't the first thought when my eyes open, and if anything, a fleeting thought when my eyes close. I am in a place where seven months ago, I never thought I would come to know. But her words haunted me throughout my long commute, meaningless tasks.

"The heart is frail and easily broken. . . yet wonderfully resilient." This new place I have come to find comfort in, exists not because I truly let it go, but because my heart just got tired of hurting. . . it wanted to breathe again, laugh again. . . and even, love again.


After the ring was on my finger, I remember thinking about what my life would be like as a military wife, versus the life I may have lived had someone different come into my life. Or the life I would have made for myself, without anyone at all. A certain sadness washed over me thinking those days and chances were gone. . . knowing that there would be very little choices left in my life that I could make that the military wouldn't make for me.


As I drove in the morning commute, thick with truck exhaust and the steam rising off the asphalt from summer's heat, the thought finally came full circle. It's like that movie, "It's a Wonderful Life." Are we living the lives we were supposed to live or waiting for an angel to intervene? Is it normal or is it a parallel universe? Here I am, living out my Mary Tyler Moore fantasy while he is somewhere in the deadly Bering Sea commanding his ship and crew.

What would I be doing, alone in the house for five days while he was out saving lives? Learn to knit? Take up fishing? Shoot bears? Work on my literary masterpiece? I am sure I would have thought of something but it's almost hard not to see his point.

There have been many times in the last seven months where I have cursed this twist of fate and yelled at the Gods. But lately, every once in a while, I find myself saying one more 'thank you.' And that's enough to keep me going, to have new adventures, and to throw myself out into the big bad world again.

Still, I admit, every once in a while, I think of him. That fleeting thought. . . just the way he looked, lying in bed at night, reading a book. The lamp behind his head, his index finger rested against his cheek, like a little boy.