Unspoken Abandonment (21 page)

The room came to a dead silence as months of anger came pouring out at that very moment.
None of it was Steve’s fault, but it came out on him.
I looked around the room, and
I
saw everyone staring at me.

“Fuck all of you
,” I said
as I walked away from my table and out of the door. As I reached the parking lot in front of the pub, Steve came out
also
and walked toward me.

“Bryan, I’m sorry.
That was a dick move in there.
I never should have asked you something like that. Come back inside, man. Please?”

Steve and I
talked for a minute, and I apologized to him for the way I had acted. We
made our way
back toward
the door when Sean came out also.

“They kicked us out.” Sean said.
“Your first night
back
and you already got us kicked out of somewhere. That’s why I love you
, man!
”

“I’m sorry guys
,
”
I said.
I continued, “I’m just not ready for this yet. I just need some time to get used to being back and dealing with everything.
This isn’t easy.
”

Sean replied, “Hey, better here than yelling at some innocent
,
impressionable
,
young
stripper.” He continued, “Come on, let’s get you home.”

My friends took me home
, and the twenty-
minute ride seemed to last all night
. We tried making small conversation in the car, but it just felt weird and forced. As Sean was driving, all I could think was that I wished I could hang out with Kevin again.
Being friends
was so
much easier with him. I did no
t need to explain
or describe
anything to him, and he did no
t have to explain anything to me. Kevin and I each had different experiences
,
and his
hurt was different than my hurt
,
but
as I
would later learn
,
hurt is hurt.
More than anything else
,
I missed my friend.

I took the next two weeks off before goi
ng back to work. I honestly do no
t remember how I spent those two weeks, but I do remember eating a lot of pizza and watching a lot of television. I was very eager to get back to my old life, rebuild my old routines, and just get things back to exactly where they used to be.

My first day back at work was basically as I had expected it to be. I worked as the Market
ing Manager for a small company, and
w
ith only twenty-three
employees
including m
yself
, they were excited to have me back. I
arrived
to work a few minutes early
,
and
I
found everyone else already there as well. My co-workers were setting up a small party to welcome me back to the office.

One of my bosses, James, approached me and welcomed me back.

“Hey buddy, it’s good to have you back!”

I replied, “Thanks James, it’s good to be back
. It’s
v
ery good to be back.”

“Listen, take your time and get adjusted before you dive into anything. We have a lot going on and I want to make sure you’re back in the game before
we start dumping things on you,
” James said reassuringly.

I told James, “No, I don’t want to take any time. The more I sit around, the longer it’s going to take. I just want to get to work.”

“Well alright then, buddy. We have
a meeting today at one, and we wi
ll get you up to speed and get you assigned
to
some projects.”

I always enjoyed my job, and I knew my return would be welcoming. The company owner, Adam, invited me to talk in his office.

“Bryan, come in and sit down.” Adam said.

Adam’s office was very large, but always seemed strangely empty. I guess you could say Adam was the typical small business owner in that he was a very nice guy
,
but
he was
also very opinionated. Work always had a feeling of Adam’s way or the highway, but after all
,
it was his company. The easiest way to get along there was to just go with the flow and agree
with
everything.

“Well, let me start off by saying
that
I can’t begin to tell you
how happy I am that you’re back,
a
nd
I’m
very glad that you’re back in one piece.”

I said, “Thanks Adam, I really appreciate that.”

Adam asked, “Is it as bad over there as the
y make it out to be on the news?
”

I replied, “It has its days. Some days weren’t so bad,
and
other days weren’t so good.”

“No shit, I bet.” Adam said. After a pause, Adam continued, “Bunch of
god damn
animals.”

The conversation was beginning to have the same tone as my night out at the bar. The only difference this time being that this conversation was with my boss. I bit my tongue
,
and
I
chose my words
with a much greater sense of respect
.

“I guess it jus
t depends on how you look at it,
” I told Adam.

He asked, “What do you mean?”

“It just depends from which side you look at something. I see things one way
,
and someone else may
see them completely different
, even though we’re looking at the same thing.
War is just perspective, and it’s only from which angle you’re looking that determines your opinions.
”

Adam said, “War is nothing but a battle of will.
It is nothing more
and
nothing less. These animals have no value for life, so how do you defeat that kind of will?”

I said, “I guess you’re right. I have no idea.”

Although I answered
with
an agreement, I could
n
o
t help but think how ludicrous this was. Who was he to lecture me about the realities of war? I knew he meant well
,
and that was all that allowed me to
agree with what he was saying
. The conversation ended
,
and I
returned
to my desk to start getting to work.

James came to my desk
and said
, “Hey buddy, I think you’ll like this.”

James then handed me a piece of paper. It had a border printed around the edges similar to a design from a diploma or certificate. The title printed across the top read, “Taliban Hun
ting Permit,” in bold lettering, and
t
he remainder of the print continued with something about killing Taliban and Afghan people. The bottom of the sheet had another bold print which read, “Proudly Presented to Bryan Wood.”

James laughed and said, “I made that for you, man.”

James gave me a pat on the back and walked away. I sat for a minute looking at the paper and simply thinking
,
“
A
re you serious
?”

I turned my computer on and spent the next few hours
poring
through the endless backlog of emails I had waiting for me. I started placing personal items back around my desk
,
and
I
just worked on getting settled back in. I started looking through
the
work files placed on a network drive available to all employees, trying to fin
d a purpose to any of them. Strangely,
I could no
t find a single one that seemed to matter. I started thinking, “What was the point to any of this?”
It all seemed so irrelevant.

As the day went on, I was eventually in the one o’clock meeting where, thankfully, the conversation was not at all about me. The meeting lasted for nearly three hours
,
with everyone carrying on about expense reports, spending budgets, quarterly profits, and so on. As each person in the meeting took
their turn
complaining about whatever issue they were having, I felt more and more cynical about everything. I couldn’t believe the things people were complaining about. I also couldn’t believe the kind of silly bullshit these people thought mattered in life.
More than anything else,
I couldn’t believe I once thought these
same
things were important. Now, expense reports were one of the most unimportant things in the world to me. At one po
int, James said if profits did no
t increase we could all end up starving on the street
s
. I do no
t think James, or anyone else in that room, had the slightest clue what it was like to see someone starving on the street.
To them, it was a figure of speech
and
certainly not something that really happens.

It did
n
o
t take long before I realized that being a Marketing Manager was no longer the place for me. I did my best to do a great job at work, but it was just obvious I needed to find something new.

Life was no longer the same. Home did
n
o
t feel like home anymore, I
was forcing
wedges between m
e
and my
oldest friends, and work became an enormous waste of time with people
whom
I had nothing in common with.
My life became very stagnant, and
I
lived this way for about a year.
I
eventually reached a point where I
decided I needed to make a change.

About a year after I returned home, I began applying with police departments in Florida. I knew that as a police officer I would be around other people who had seen the harder side of life. I would be around people who would see life
in a
manner
much
more similar
to the way I did.
I also knew it would be in a new environment, with new people, and i
t was the fresh start I needed.

I went to my father and asked,
“Hey Dad, can I talk to you about something?”

“Yeah,” he said
. “
What’s up?”

“I’m thinking about leaving. I’m thinking about moving to Florida”

He asked, “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but why?”

I began to explain the way I had felt, and what my life had been like for the last year. I told my father that I needed a change and
how
I
thought
this was something I needed to do.

He explained, “I wish you would do something safer, but I understand. You see life through a very different perspective than a lot of other people now, and you need to go do whatever makes you happy. No matter what you decide to do, I’ll always be behind you
,
one hundred percent.”

It did
n
o
t take long
at all
until I was
offered a position as
a p
olice
o
fficer
with
a great agency
along Florida’s Gulf Coast
, and I relocated to a new
beginning
.
Such a drastic change did
n
o
t come without uncertainty. As I was making this change, I constantly wondered if I was doing something positive or making the worst mistake of my life. I set my fears aside, packed everything I owned into the back of my car, and I went for it.
I wi
ll never forget
my
first day in the police academy,
and
when I realized I made
one of
the
best
decision
s possible
.

There were approximately fifty or so students in the police academy class on the first day, and everyone was waiting anxiously in their assigned seat in the classroom. A minute or two after
eight
o’clock in the morning, a short, stocky man
,
in his mid-thirties
,
walked into the room. He was wearing black shorts with a red
,
long sleeve tee shirt
,
with “Instructor” printed
in white lettering
on the front and back.