My Life is Not My Own

I've been driving since about 04:00 this morning. Been thinking about why I got so mad at my dispatcher yesterday (well, besides the obvious reasons). I wasn't just mad. I was heartbroken. I guess that's a common feeling when you realize that it doesn't make a damn what you like or dislike, much less what you want.

But I've still been chewing on it. It doesn't seem quite that simple. Then it finally hit me. My subconscious couldn't get my attention any other way, so it took control of my mouth and said “Your life is not your own.” Strange to hear myself say that. My God. That was it.

My life doesn't belong to me. After all that I've lost in the past ten months, what tattered remains there are belong to my company. Not to me. I leave when they say leave. I go “home” only when they say and if I don't get there when I expect to, no one at The Company loses any sleep over it. They go home at 5 o'clock. They never have to wonder if they have weekends off. It doesn't touch them.

Very little of my former life remains. When I visit Mama on the weekends, it's like going to a museum. Here and there among her stuff are scattered a few relics of my past. My figurine of the woman sitting with her arm leaning on a pedastal topped with flowers. My brass bell tree. The bust I made of a Borrellian cerei. Everything else is in storage. And given my lack of transportation, they might as well be on another continent.

Whenever I want to visit the few relics that are on display, it's at The Company's whim. That's what hurts so much. I'm not even allowed to go back to my non-life in Kings Mountain unless it conveniences the company.

All I really need is a moment's hope. Instead I find myself lying in the dark on someone else's couch, watching shadows dance upon the walls of someone else's apartment, wishing I could go to sleep so that I might sleep a few hours before the alarm on my cellphone goes off and I return to someone else's life in someone else's truck. All that's left to me is the next pickup and the next delivery. That's a pattern that repeats until it suits the company's purposes to allow me to return to Kings Mountain to sit awhile and stare at the relics until it's time to leave again.

I suppose that realization was driven home yesterday with startling clarity.