Dumped for the Holidays

         He left a message on the voicemail, at seven-fifteen in the morning.  "I'm ah, calling to tell you I've found someone," his detached voice said into her ear.  "I'm happy…. I'll talk to ya later." Funny, his voice didn't sound happy.
         She couldn't believe what she heard.  Accidentally, she replayed the massage, and it was utter torture.  She sat there, looking at the monitor forever, figuring that the black page with white words that had nothing to do with what just happened—what didjust happen?—as if it were some oracle that could divine, or maybe just explain what the hell she did to deserve getting dumped.  On the goddamned voicemail.  At a time when he knew she was not going to be home to answer the phone.  Didn't she just buy a plane ticket to see him Thanksgiving?  Didn't she just fight for the time off, at a time when holiday leave could only go to a small number of people because these were perilous times and the unit was at a high state of readiness?  Didn't he just tell her four days ago how much he missed her and looked forward to seeing her (among other things)?  Just four days ago?  What the fuck, over?
          Shit, here we go again.  She felt her chest tightening up, her face compressed into an expression of pain.  She threw that cursed messenger upon the floor.  She felt like she was breathing through Jell-O, which exacerbated the tightening of her chest.  Why now?  God, the holidays are going to suck.  Shit, the next few hours are going to suck! She was in charge of the battalion holiday party, where there would be families and spouses, and children running around, and she swore to God if any of 'em gave her that 'poor, single you' look she'd show them a silent fuckin' night!
         But she was getting ahead of herself.  She needed a lifeline in this empty, partially furnished house on the outskirts of town.  Quick, get the Palm!  Find Mom's number.
         Mom wasn't home.  It wasn't even five back in Maryland, and she had been let go early, after a discussion on how to watch for depressed and suicidal soldiers.  Yeah, that was irony for you.
         Same with her two best friends.
         What am I gonna—
         It began.  The tears she was trying to prevent from falling came, first one, then more and more, as they seemed to sense it was okay to escape the prison of irritated tear ducts.  There were too many changes in her life for this kind of agita.  The new unit, her first house that she didn't even have enough furniture to fill, the weight gain, the new haircut she had to get to distance herself from her overprocessed, limp locks.  Thirty coming around the corner—she could already hear the faint ticking of The Biological Clock.  Most of all, the floating away from the people she knew and knew her best.
         Christ, she knew how hard it was in a long-distance relationship, but what person in uniform didn't?  Separation came with the job.  Shit, he's been in longer than she has, and he should know that.  He was going to marry her, retire, and be with her until she retired.  He mattered so much to her. But was it because she was getting older and certain things weren't as easy to come by?  She would look at the desks of most of her bosses, many of her peers, and a great deal of her subordinates, and see photos of them with their families.  She remembered reading in the Army Times that eighty percent of soldiers are married or support children.  Was it some conspiracy for her to remain Sergeant Spinster?  She told them that coming to the 1st Cavalry Division instead of going back to Fort Meade, Maryland, where he was waiting would not be good for her emotionally.  So here she was in Fort Hood, Texas, where her career would be prestigious but she would come home to an empty house, a somewhat self-imposed solitude she found wasn't bad with the possibility of someone that would come to stay, to share.  Eventually she'll revert back to her independent, self-loving persona, but it was gonna be rough for a while.  Especially over the holidays.  The holidays were going to suck.
         He gave up.  Someone was better than her simply because she was not there.  So many times it was the other person that gave up and chose someone else, often to marry.  Whether their marriages were happy were irrelevant to her; it didn't make her feel any less like a damned springboard.  Why wasn't she good enough to wait on?  Why not her?  Was she wearing a sign on her forehead saying “I Enjoy Being Mistreated?”  If he were standing in front of her now, she'd ask him, "Why?  I sat there and listened to how devastated you were when your wife left you, and here you are doing the same thing to me.  What, am I supposed to be understanding and happy for you when you break my fucking heart?  Why is it so easy for you to just leave one relationship and go on to the next?  Are you even sorry you hurt me?  Did you ever care about me?  What is so wrong with me that you have to end it this way?"
         Truth was, she already knew the answers from his cowardly phone call.  She would be angry with herself for being the idiot that wasted her time and compassion on the son of a bitch.  She's old enough to know better, right? So why was she still making stupid-ass choices? The bitterness would kick in, and she will say to herself no more, then she'd meet another person that will hurt her too, but with a different m.o.  I'm sick and tired of this.  I'm getting too old for this shit.
         She wondered when it would stop hurting.  When would she get to the point that she could say, 'Well, it's his loss.  I didn't need the prick anyway,' and shrug it all off.  Did she need to go through this over and over until her battered heart was conditioned?  They say pain is just weakness leaving the body, and muscles ache in the process of getting stronger.  She thought she was jaded enough, that she could take anything.  She had proven that, and she was so strong for her soldiers.  How many times had she told her young privates dealing with their first breakup that it would pass?  How many times had she told them to 'suck it up and drive on' when the mission prevented them from being with their loved ones?  Countless?  Well, then why does it still fucking hurt? 
         So who was this now-blubbering, red-eyed mass before her in the mirror?  Listening to that damned Smiths song that she always broke out after a dumping, the one where she weeps every time Morrissey proclaims he's human and he needs to be loved just like everyone else does?  What's the name of that—“How Soon is Now?”  Yeah, that one.  Eventually she'd get over him and be back to her old cynical self.  But for now, she'd be more than a little bitter, put on a face for the troops, and for Chrissake keep working, because if she stopped to realise that she's human and she needs to be loved just like everybody else does, she'd start crying again.  She'd leave that weepy shit for home.  The only way out of heartache is through, apparently. And oh yeah, the holidays were going to suck.