November 14, 2017.
Today has been cold. Even tho it is only the beginning of much colder days to come in the not to distant future. I found myself to sit and ponder about a great many things as the snow danced over the windshield of the work truck. I watched and sipped my coffee as flake after fluffy flake would lightly dance in the wind and kiss the cold glass before being swept away again or watch as one after another touched the glass for a moment to long and melt to nothing. Secretly, this is one of my favorite things to do. Had it not been for the nasty wind I would have sat upon the steps outside of the lunch trailer, head phones in listening to classical music, watching each perfect flake come to an easy rest on the barren earth.
This will be my fourth winter of working outside in the cold. I don't mind being outside at all. In fact, I am more than happy to be outside every night under a star filled sky instead of being trapped in a building surrounded by walls. But tonight is not one of which I wish to spend in the cold, heartless, and desolate night of the great white north. No, not tonight. On this night more parts of my body are beginning to ache in the dropping temperatures and I am starting to wonder why I wanted to get into the trades in the first place.
However, I know exactly why I did it. I wanted to be strong. I wanted the world to know that I am tough. That I can work in a mans world. That I can work just as hard if not harder than any of the men around me and have them call me a brother. I worked harder than anyone else so much so that I completed my Journeyman ticket in two and a half years at the ripe age of 22. I wanted everyone around me to know that (pardon my french) I was not to be fucked with and that anyone in the way of what I wanted would be cut down. That way of life did not stay up here in the camps and out in the plants. It has followed me home. Tattoos cover my body. Curse words fall from my lips at all times. Partying more days than I can count. At 23 years old, I have made a life for myself...but it is no longer the life I want.
If you were to ask some of the hell's I have gone through in even the last year alone, I would tell you of how I have miscarried a child and how the fiance (with his hand in my pocket book and his many other lovers in my bed) left me soon after I lost the child. How I was on a path of self destruction soon after he left. How I have had to rebuild my life and get back into my career from almost nothing... These are all my own undoings and I have no one to blame but myself.
These are some of the things I think about as each snow flake hits the glass.
I also think about him. The wonderful man with the long brown hair and hazel eyes. The only man I have fallen for since my ex had left. I think about him more than I am willing to admit. He is my Steppenwolf. A man who has no home, no belongings other than the pack on his strong back and freedom to go anywhere. He is a lone wolf with no desire to settle down in one place or to ever be betrothed to any woman. A man who only hungers for adventure and freedom with so many bold ideals of the world and so much knowledge. Someone that shares the same sense of humor and wonder as myself. Someone to which I have never felt so comfortable to share dark secrets and a side of me I have let no other man see. A lust that burns hotter than a thousand suns and a chemistry more magnetic than Magnatar. I miss him more than anything else. He too is gone now.
Before him my dream was to own a small hobby farm, to be married and have two or four children running around in the countryside. To have a large garden and greenhouse where I could reap the rewards of hard labour with fresh vegetables for my family and to earn my keep as a stay at home mom. That was the life I so desperately wanted but now...I don't know what I want. The spark that I thought had long since turned to ash has been rekindled to the sense of adventure. A hunger to see all that this fantastic and unbelievable world has to offer. From the tallest of its towering mountain peeks to its deepest of oceans. I want to be with my Steppenwolf and see all of these things. It would be for not. He will not have me.
So I sit in the darkness of my dismal night shift, with my crew of two (whom neither of them have seen their family's in over 70 days) listening to a static filled radio music and sipping weak coffee as the snow blankets the cold hard sandy wasteland. "Spose to get 10 centimeters of 'sno tmorra night." a voice from the back seat brings me back to reality. Just eight more days... Just eight more days...