I'm sitting here in front of the computer, feeling like I can't breathe. I'll be leaving in the morning, and this feeling in my heart and throat comes from the fact that I hate driving a truck that much.

Well, I should say that I hate being away from home that much. I feel like my life has been put on hold, and I won't get it back until I've come home for good. This crap of coming in every four weeks or so just leaves me feeling like I'm visting someone else's life. My life is a series of pick-ups, transits and delivery. I'm not a human being. I have no life. I am a functional part of a larger unit.

Most days I can look past that and consign myself to my fate. But sitting here in front of this computer, after having tasted a few days of freedom and enjoyed being home and sleeping in my own bed and feeling the vaguest sense of what my life might be like if I were to just get out of that truck, makes it damned hard to get back behind that wheel.

Of course, financially I'm in no position to entertain thoughts of coming home. Even if I could find a decent job in the area, I don't know how I'd get to it. It's not likely we could afford a second car any time soon. Getting my old Thunderbird back on the road has mostly become an in-joke. We couldn't afford the gas for that bitch, even if we had the money to get her back on the road.

So what do I do? Mara may never know how well I summed it up when I put a quote on my web site; “Sometimes I feel. Sometimes I just drive.” That quote would be more accurate if it read “most times I just drive.”