Page 32 of The Love Duet
While I hated the frigid pain of winter, summer was an entirely different animal altogether.Shade couldn’t always be found, and the sweaty mess that came with it was always unpleasant.Luckily, I had a few more weeks before things would become unbearable again, and if I had to pick my most favorite months out of the year, they’d be April and October; April because the weather was always perfect, October because I’d always been a fan of Halloween.
Growing up in Kern, Oregon, life had been simple and almost like living in a damn family sitcom.My father, Gene Austin, had been a history teacher for our only high school, and my mother, Mara Austin, had been a bank teller at one of the only two banks in town, and with no siblings to share the spotlight, I’d gotten away with a lot, though I had also gotten punished for a lot more.
Nonetheless, with Kern being a small town, Halloween had always been a fun affair, no one worried about crime like in the big cities.In Kern, everyone had known everyone else, and every parent on the block had known us kids by name.Whenever I looked back on that time in my life, it was always with a fondness that made my heart ache a bit.Unfortunately, it always took adulthood to make you realize just how much you’d taken childhood for granted.
In addition to that idealistic childhood, I’d also been fortunate enough to have had a stellar career in the military.I had joined at the ripe old age of eighteen, and if ever there was a crash course in growing up, it was the military.Wanting to be the best of the best, I had joined the Marines, and nothing changed a man like experiencing the military up-close and personal.I mean, you could read the books and watch the movies, but none of those depictions ever came close to the actual experience.Only other service members understood and felt the profound difference that defending your country made.
At any rate, like most men who believed that they could do anything, I’d also gotten married rather young.Though I’d already had two deployments under my belt, I’d been only twenty-eight, and that’d been far too young to get married.Yeah, lots of people did it, and a lot of those marriages survived the hard times, but marriage was also something else that changed a man; at least, it should.When you became responsible for another person, there came a whole new set of rules that needed to be played by, and when you were young, it was easy to believe that you could skim past some of those rules, but you really couldn’t.Marriage was a partnership unlike any other, and not enough people took it seriously enough, me included.
It also wasn’t like becoming a parent.Being responsible for a child was different from being responsible for a wife.Raising a child gave you a hand in how they would view you, and the love there was almost always unconditional, which wasn’t the case with a spouse.A spouse wasn’t a child that was dependent on you until they became of age.A spouse was an adult that could change their mind the minute that things were no longer working for them, and that’s what had happened to me.
I’d met Bethany Cramer through an online pen-pal program for deployed soldiers, and after chatting for months, I’d been eager to meet her the second that I had stepped foot back on US soil, and our relationship had been the very definition of a whirlwind romance.While the months of messages had been vital in getting to know each other, it had also felt like they’d been keeping us apart, so after six months of chatting, then six months of dating in the real world, I had asked Bethany to marry me, and she’d said yes with the biggest smile on her face.
For ten years, we’d been happy.For ten years, Bethany had worked as a billing clerk in a medical office, and she had held the fort down during two more deployments.Everything had been fine until she’d gotten pregnant, the final blessing that we’d needed to complete our perfect life.I’d been scared and exhilarated all at the same time, but I’d also been ready to embrace fatherhood with a desire for life that I’d never felt before.
However, our perfect life had imploded when Bethany had miscarried in her fourth month, and I’d been in a foreign country, finalizing the last stretch of my military career before retirement, so that I could be at home with my wife and all the children that she’d been willing to give me.
Still, having to experience the loss without me at her side, she’d been angry and hurt, and rightfully so.It hadn’t mattered that I’d been granted immediate leave, reaching her within two days; the damage had already been done.In a torrent of loneliness, tears, rage, and pain, Bethany’s resentment had spewed forth like a violent volcano that’d had enough, and she had blamed me for losing the baby, needing to blame someone for her anguish.
A month later, she had filed for divorce, not caring how close I’d been to retirement, and because guilt was a motherfucker, I had granted her the divorce, refusing to be the reason that she continued to be miserable.The last that I’d heard, she still worked at the medical office, but she was remarried, had two kids, and both children looked like her with their dark brown hair and amber-colored eyes.They were also girls, which I thought was perfect for the Bethany that I’d known.
As for me, instead of retiring, I had punished myself by dedicating five more years of my life to serving my country, and I couldn’t help but constantly wonder where my life would be right now if I hadn’t given those extra five years.It was also hard to see myself now and not resent the sacrifices that I’d made in the name of my country.While I was proud of the belief behind the message, I also felt discarded, and nothing was worse than feeling like trash that was so easily thrown away.
Despite it all, there was a small measure of comfort in knowing that I wasn’t the only one, though I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad.For all of the help out there, none of it would ever be enough because you couldn’t help those that didn’t want to help themselves, and for the ones that really wanted help, the financial and emotional costs could be too much sometimes.While a lot of people believed that counseling was about substantial advice to help someone overcome their demons, it wasn’t.
It was about connecting.
It was about connecting with that one person who had the ability to make you feel heard and seen.It was about connecting with a therapist who didn’t make you feel like just another appointment.It was about connecting with someone who saw past what you were saying to understand what you were really feeling, something that not everyone had the ability to do.
Shaking my head, I rolled up my stuff, ready to call it a night.Luckily, the sun was still playing nice, so the evenings were still cool and comfortable, something that was going to change quickly with the month of June rolling in, and once July and August rolled around, the suffocating misery of heat was going to roll right on in alongside them.
Now, could things be worse?Always.
Could they be better?I hoped so.
Either way, I wasn’t quite ready to give up, though you’d think that I’d already had by just looking at me, but that wasn’t the case.The fact that I was still alive was proof enough that I hadn’t given up just yet, and I knew myself well enough to know that I was nowhere near close to the point of no return, something that helped keep me warm at night.
Something that I was still very proud of.
Chapter 2
Josiah~
The trick to being left alone was to be alone.Like gang members, if a crowd of homeless people was big enough to make citizens uncomfortable, then the police always made an appearance, and that was never a good thing, especially in small towns.
So, since I didn’t feel like being harassed for nothing, I usually kept to myself, making sure to only go into town when I needed to, which wasn’t often.I also made sure to hit town at night, knowing that the end-of-the-day scraps would be enough for everyone, as I wasn’t the only homeless person in Macon.I also wasn’t the only homeless veteran, which was something that I struggled with daily.While it sounded asinine, most of us veterans weren’t homeless because we didn’t want to work or were on drugs.Most of us were homeless because we were fucked in the head, me included.So, it bothered me when people lumped us in with the rest of the homeless population, treating us like our disabilities weren’t real because they couldn’t see them.
When I had finally retired from the military, unlike a lot of my fellow servicemen, I hadn’t had a hard time acclimating to civilian life.I’d had a stable enough childhood and strong enough rearing that the military hadn’t brainwashed me into conforming to only one way of life.I’d always understood that being a Marine had been my job, and though I’d been dedicated like hell to the cause, it’d still been nothing but my job; it hadn’t been my lifestyle.
However, somewhere in the quietness of my new life, there’d been nothing to distract me from the memories of my last tour.I’d had no wife, children, or hobbies to remind me of what I’d been fighting for, and all my brothers-in-arms had gone back to their own lives, all of us scattered across the nation once we’d come back home.It’d been a lonely time, and being an only child hadn’t helped.
As for my parents, they had chosen to retire just a year earlier, and I hadn’t wanted to bother them with my problems.They had worked hard all their lives to be able to enjoy the time that they’d had left, and babysitting their grown son wouldn’t have been healthy for anyone.So, instead of reaching out to them for help, I had let things get to the point of desperation, and I spent my days convincing myself that it was for the best.
Now, deep down, I knew that it was the judgement that I feared, but even knowing that, it didn’t help.When the nightmares had first started, I hadn’t tried waiting them out.When the flashbacks had first started hitting me, I hadn’t tried walking them off.When the panic attacks had first begun, I hadn’t tried overcoming them alone.The second that my mental stability had begun to show cracks, I had called the veteran’s support line, and they had immediately directed me to a local therapy group, and I hadn’t wasted any time signing up for the meetings.
I’d done everything right.
Then, about a year later, after bonding with the group that had turned into my new family, a significant lack of funding had shut the doors to the only place that had brought me peace, and I’d felt the loss hard enough that I was still trying to recover from it.Suddenly, no one cared about my mental stability, and I’d never felt so goddamn alone.
