Choices In the Marketplace

 

Last night as I worked late at a market, something rare occurred. There were four of us left in the then closed market cleaning up. I’d finished cleaning the bathrooms, as our manager had worked on collecting all the recyclables, and compostables along with other items, some to be taken out to containers outside of the marketplace. We had one person facing and helping the manager get items ready for shipments and stocking in the morning. Another person after assisting the manager with the other closing operations for the night, she then began to check food bank and waste items in.

Eventually, there were two of us in the same location of the store. As I was then working on cleaning up the help desk area, washing dishes, cleaning coffee items and such. This other person was a well-educated woman, who was a physical therapist. And as some may know I’m a licensed massage therapist for medical purposes. Currently she isn’t practicing, and I just got back six weeks ago to my therapy practice after four years, four months and a seventeen-day sabbatical and decompressing period to focus on our two daughters, and the house, after losing my husband, their father in 2020.  Both she and I have had small talks, which are always brief due to the nature of our work at the market and mostly work related. I think we are both workaholics and it seems as though we don’t mind being so employed. I think we revel in it.

As I scrubbed, washed dishes and cleaned counters, she worked checking in waste items and the like, we began discussing career related burnout. We figured it was due to our personalities. Just days before, working with her and another employee in the cooler, we had a similar, few words to this young up and comer who was entering the therapy world. Just weeks prior, I’d had about fifteen minutes of lunch with this young twenty-something year old as we discussed burnout in therapy work and relaxed in the breakroom during our break that day. I told her my flaw in caring too much and carrying the weight of other’s burdens on my soul which caused me spiritual burnout. And that it took me years to recover.  I did tell the twenty-something year old this, but I think she’s smarter than I am in caring less to salvage her occupation at critical times. I have seen how she paces herself at work from time to time and she’s got that calm-ease not just externally, yet I’m betting dollars to donuts its there internally as well.

When working in a marketplace after hours, being awake since early morning due to your other obligations—you beckon for the silence of the night in a closed market.  Last night as the two of us worked, we heard music that was not what would normally be played during the day when the market is open to the public. She commented that the music didn’t feel congruent with how she was. I agreed. I’d felt the same way.  The word chaos came up. Scrubbing and rinsing I remarked, “Fighting is chaotic. I’d always been like that, but hadn’t physically expressed it till later in life, when my husband encouraged it.” She remarked, “I know what you mean. Its about control.” I remarked, “Yeah. A cage is a controlled environment of chaos. When 9-11 happened, we were in the middle of our first adoption. We couldn’t wait to be parents. However, my husband had remarked, that he’d understand my wanting to re-up. I told him we want to be parents and I will find another way to serve. I can tell you to not re-up back then was killing me inside, though.”

As I drove home from the market late last night, I contemplated another conversation I’d had with her. I expressed that, “…if my husband were alive today, he’d encourage my desire to go back into the military. Yet, my husband was not like me in that respect. I just have had this urge to fight in battle. I don’t know why this feeling has always been inside of me.” She suggested a teamwork mentality and a knowing of what to expect. I’m not so sure. I know that serving has seemed to suit me. Being told what to do works for me as well—and I love being loyal to for a good cause. Yet, I know of no one in my family who was in the military and felt the way I have and do.--- Jody-Lynn Reicher