Ain't it funny how time slips away.....

This morning at 4:45 am was the the 13th anniversary of me leaving San Antonio....

It made me sad as I sat in front of the monitors, and other communications equipment and listened to the electric hum of the fans, and the flickers of the screens to realize that I've been gone from there for so long. In all honesty it feels like much, much, longer.. Decades in fact.

I've aged more than I could have ever imagined in all this time. I truly have. And not just in the chronological sense either. I've aged about 40 years in my heart. Psychic scars run deep, and never really heal if you want to know the truth. They scab over and slightly fade, but never really disappear. They become macabre tattoos that etch themselves across the tender tissues of your soul, marking you forever....

They wake you up at night out of a sound sleep, and you find yourself pouring a drink at 4:17 am just to forget the dreams you were having. The neck of your shirt moist with sweat, and your tongue sore from where you had been chewing on it in your sleep.

You start collecting ghosts, and phantoms of people long past that haunt you. You can develop regrets that grab hold of you and literally take your breath away in the still and abandoned moments that live only after midnight passes. In those thin, gauze-like hours where you feel as if you are the only living thing awake as you smell your coffee breath, and count the minutes until you can walk out of the triple MagLocked doors into the mosquito filled night and escape out the barbedwire festooned electric gates.

Parole finally comes in the form of a co-worker who whines and bitches about how early it is, or how they're so tired. Sign out, walk out, start car, head home...

13 years....

Damn... I need to get back home....