It's a misty, wandering place I seem to retain from my dreams, and sometimes it resurfaces as if it's something I have to remember, bubbling up amidst appointments and schedules: the dentist is Tuesday and don't drink from that creek or you'll catch beaver fever and Janie's dress rehearsal is Wednesday evening don't forget.
And I don't. Forget. At the end of the day I lie in bed and ponder it all, think about my three little girls and wonder if I would have rather had boys, and I think maybe not. Probably I shouldn't have had kids at all.
Because the restlessness doesn't sleep. It folds under in the morning, the way you fold a map on your car trip when you know where you're going, but as soon as the roads get tricky, you unfold it and lay it over the steering wheel, a crumpled mess and blocking your view.
That's how the place is. Because when Sandra and I start through rocky times I unfold it, and without knowing what I am doing, I am asking for a divorce, and I am searching for a place I don't know, hoping something I only know from my dreams will look familiar, and watching my savings account- my girls' college fund- burn to sparks of truths and lies in the process as I tell Sandra that I am pursuing business ventures, and that someday one will pay off.
Eventually, though, the race must stop. I can't afford another trip to anywhere, so here I am. I've taken a job about eight million steps worse than the one I left, in a place about four thousand times more remote, and I go home to an apartment that I ought to get condemned one of these days. I've burned up my trying, but my dreams remain, untainted. I've finally come to terms with the fact that they're unobtainable.
I was once a top real estate agent in the Boston area.
Now I sell lamps in Jefferson City, Missouri. Outdoor lighting, mind you, not home lamps. Nope, there is no way to make that jobs sound more prestigious, and there is no way it is going to put my daughters through college. I ruined my life for a dream that was hardly more than the feeling of cold mist on my skin when I wasn't concentrating hard enough on not thinking about it. I'm going nowhere fast, and I put myself there this time.
No more time to tell you my sad story, though. I have a sales run to make. Some divorcee moved out near my boss's place, and my boss got the idea that I can sell him something just because I am a divorcee too. I guess we are supposed to share beers and woes and lives' stories. He's some kind of rancher. Not very likely we'll find anything in common, but I guess he has the dark and I've got the light. What more do we need?