Bye Big Daddy

Fleeting, friendships are in a war zone. Tenuous, merely existing for as long as they are convenient for The Company. People are tossed about, scattered to the wind. Each day, we are supposed to feel lucky. Lucky to participate in this travesty. Lucky to be alive. Just lucky. They tell us to feel lucky.

Those with whom I have laughed, those I have shared my life with, bonded with, cried with...they float before me in my mind. Emotional ties are without purpose here. This is work, they say, and it is always different, it must be calculated in the best interest of The Company. To them, the people here are just bodies, here to produce. When they cannot, they are sent away, without regard, without emotion, often without so much as a goodbye. We know that when we arrive: that we can disappear at any time, that we live in a world exclusive of obligation.

Yet to me, the passage of time in this land has only made our fleeting bonds more poignant. We are the sum of our hopes and dreams; each struggling in this strange place, crying in our beds alone at night; wishing we were elsewhere yet completely unable to leave. What we never noticed is that while we were so busy hating it, it became home. And we rise each morning, faithfully filled with misguided purpose, numbly grasping the remaining fabric of our dreams, wondering if today will be our last, wondering how much strength it will take to get through one more day.

They arrive early in the morning, suitcases in hand, dragging fifty pounds of flak jacket and helmet behind them through the moondust. Sometimes they leave the next day. Sometimes they stay a while. Sometimes they seek me out, looking for connection, looking for answers without so much as being able to form the questions. Sometimes they talk of lives long abandoned back home...the children and wives left behind to fend for themselves. Sometimes they let me see the hurt in their eyes: the tattered relationships, the bankruptcies, the illnesses. Sometimes they admit how broken they are, as they see the look of recognition flash in my eyes. There is a common thread with us all. One that weaves us carelessly together, bound by proximity and the dusty trail of our own failures.

It does no good to cry anymore. Yet I cannot seem to stop.

Bye for now, my friend.