Saturday, July 14, 2012

Insight

I saw a little kid cry because he was homesick tonight. He was hyperventilating he was crying so hard. His mom came and picked him up and stroked his hair and told him everything was going to be just fine, they were going home soon, just one more night in a strange bed and it would all be over. He cried into his mom's shoulder as she held him and rocked him. He was clearly too big to be held by his mother, but he didn't care, and neither did she. As I watched I teared up and thought, "I"m homesick too. Where's my mommy to come pick me up. I want someone to come take me home too." Perhaps it was just fresh in my head after a boring desk shift spent with an interesting new friend and an old familiar conversation, but Rick's words came to mind, "They never know, they don't realize what we give up personally to live this life." It's so true and I feel like someone should tell you. I feel like someone should know that my life isn't all butterflies and puppy dog tails. This life sometimes sucks. And that's hard to say when I'm in different cities each week and when I'm traveling the world at my company's expense. But sometimes, sometimes, I just wish I had a normal life again. I can't even follow a TV show...I don't even have cable to follow a TV show. It's not worth the money because I would never be home to watch it. And "home..." this place that I call "home" that I see three maybe four days a month is dusty every time I get to come back to it. And my bed, and my clothes, and my car...sometimes I just want MY life back. I wish I didn't have to come back to an empty hotel room each night, and it's not just that there's not physically someone there it's that most of the time I'm either A. too tired or B. in a different time zone so I can't even CALL someone to make it feel like I'm not isolated from the world outside of my job. I want someone to talk to each night...but I love my job and my biggest fear of all right now is that I will never be happy not doing what I do. That I will never feel settled in one place, that I will never be, normal. And what kind of person wants to deal with someone in this type of life?  Honestly I can't have a relationship of any kind, not friends, not boyfriends, and thank goodness my family keeps a hold of me because I'd be lost without them and sometimes it's a struggle to keep them in the loop with my crazy life. The truth is, I envy you. Not all the time, not when I'm on a beach in Hawaii or on a train in the Scottish highlands, not at the great points, correction, the amazing points, but at the okay, mediocre points when I'm at a meeting and someone thanks their wife for all the love and support with sincere tears in their eyes and I realize that I'm alone and at the end of the night I'm still alone, and there's no one awake to call, and not a whole lot of people who can understand, and at that point I feel more alone and sad than ever before, and I want to curl up in a ball and cry...but you can't, you have to keep it together, and you have make it look like your job is the best job in the world and that everything is butterflies and puppy dog tails. Keep smiling for the client, keep pushing through on the lack of sleep and that corner of emptiness in your life. It's all worth something, you're living your dream, and you never know what next month has in store... I just, thought you should know.

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