The day after tomorrow

Since April of 98, I have had seven jobs. I was fired from five of them, a thing that had never happened before the car wreck and the brain injury. I’ve had to get used to a new reality since then. The job I have now is working with developmentally disabled adults. I’m "on call", having no permanent assignment. I have been working in one of the homes all of December, replacing someone who was injured there and is still out.

I could have had another full week – 40 hours – next week too, but tomorrow is my last day and that’s the way it is.

I am leaving this job and taking on a position as a live-in care provider to the aunt of a high school friend in northern California. My recent job experiences will provide a stark contrast to my next "client". an 88 year old woman who worked at Stanford. She is not DD, just old, and it will be nice to work with people who talk and who make sense. It’ll be even nicer to have only one client to deal with.

I was offered that job in the summer, when I drove down to see my friend, who had found me on Facebook 33 years after we graduated from the Private School we went to. I had just done an interview with another company, who works with DD kids, and had little experience to draw on. I didn’t know that only a little while later my best friend and the guy I see most was going to decide to go back east to take care of his aging mom. Him leaving this area was damn near the last thing I wanted to hear – I’m alone enough now. I drove down again at the end of November and discovered that a woman I had met there a few times was … well, she is The One for me at this time of my life. I hadn’t really planned anything, it just sort of happened, that we hugged and kissed and made out and found that we each felt the same way, that here was the person we had been looking for, and why the fuck not run with it and see how far it goes?

That in fact was the deciding factor, the fact that I had found someone special, who felt the same way, and who I felt I needed to be THERE with to fulfill that destiny, or karma, or fate or whatever. One thing I learned from my marriage is that if you aren’t there you can’t make it work. I am fortunate not to have any firm, I guess, ties to the region, and can, and have, decided to leave and go south, to California, a place I haven’t called home since 1982.

Text messaging and long distance phone calls are not a substitute for BEING THERE.

And I’m going, the day after tomorrow, and tomorrow is my last day of work for the company I work for now.

***

I’ve said it and I’ve written it and still find it hard to believe that the day after tomorrow I’ll be driving to a new life.

A glorious life, a wonderful life, a life very different than the one I have lived since 1998.

2014 is going to be a very good year for me, I can see its outlines, its smooth curves, its contours, from here, and it looks so good, I can’t wait until next year begins – I am going south to a new life the day after tomorrow.

***

Onwards, towards a bright, loving, inclusive future.

It’s gonna be all that I could want, and more.

And it begins the day after tomorrow.

Onwards!

*****