I quit my job three months ago, for no reason other than I felt disrespected.  I am a 51 year old woman.  Yeah, I Know… Good Idea!!! (drip drip goes the sarcasm.)  The world isn’t particularly kind to 51 year old unemployed female professionals.  So be it.  It is, as they say, what it is.  I will survive, pretty likely, as the odds are with me since I pretty much always have…survived that is.

And That’s the thing.  I was doing very well surviving, holding my head high above the proverbial water, fighting the good fight.  I was “The Good Soldier.”  And while that label sounds mildly complementary, it is not.  At All.  It is a label I used back when I was working, when I wasn’t yet 50, and thought I knew a heck of a lot more than I do now or ever will.  I was a jerk. I own that.   And “The Good Soldier” was my label for ladies of what is now my age who had given up.  The label came from a particularly nasty old boss of mine.  I should have known better than to internalize it given his character.  But this isn’t about him.

It is about “The Good Soldier.”  She (they were a She in my world) is 30-50 lbs overweight and doesn’t seem to care.  Her husband ignores her and her kids disrespect her although she finances them at times.  Her medical records contain diet pills and antidepressants, and yearly antibiotics for her annual winter-long malaise, not so much sick as Run Down.  She overworks for 50-60 hours a week.  She eats junk and has no hobbies because her family’s Comfort is her Life.  Because She Cares.  But nobody really cares about her, not enough for uncrappy gifts on Christmas or for someone to plan a vacation and invite her along.  She plans, she bakes, she works and she Sacrifices.  And our factories and facilities all across the USA are full of “The Good Soldier.”. She sews on a machine wearing a sweatshirt that reads “Grandma.”  She might work at a desk she never leaves for lunch…or a walk.  Ever.  She might even assist in your surgery, make your life livable again.  But, you see, hers really Isn’t.  It isn’t Life.  It is survival.

Surviving and doing for others is what the selfless “Good Soldier” does…until she doesn’t.  Because That is what happens to her.  One day she just starts failing, usually both mentally and physically contemporaneously, and it all comes to a halt.  There are doctors and hospitals and she is, unshockingly given the severity of her condition, never the same.  The thing that winds her up in the middle of her back stops turning.  She is still and shuffling quiet…in the kitchen, on the couch, maybe in bed, medicated and slow, our “Good Soldier.”  She is there but not really There.

As I said, I saw her and labeled her, managed her and her issues, saw her way out of the workforce.  And I felt her pain, a dull ache, like a mild toothache in your soul, or like the pain of a child crying silently, alone.  And it was Absolutely Terrifying.  So as soon as I started to feel it (giving myself too much credit, a While after I did and tried unsuccessfully to medicate it) I ran from her.  I ran as far and as fast as I could from that image if her, from my face superimposed upon the picture my mind holds of her.

She followed me at first but not now.  I made it out, escaped.   And No Matter what happens to me, where I work or don’t, how I live or don’t, I won. I got away.  I got away from being her, from her abject pain, from the mere survival of things as a way of life, from giving my all to nothingness like I never lived…from becoming “The Good Soldier.”