Picture
I was looking for a picture to put on here. I realize if you want a picture of an animal I own or my daughter, there are more than enough to pick from. However, if it's me, it's difficult to pick. If it's my son, even more so because he seems to hate me taking pictures of him when he's around. Since he's going to be 17 in just a few weeks that isn't too often.
I ended up stumbling across the pictures I brought back from last year when I was in Afghanistan. We were taking a group photo and we had the serious pose, the smiling pose and this one, which was just the spur of the moment goofy pose. I have kept in touch with about four of these people on Facebook, and the rest I hope are doing well. It is strange to think that a year ago I was winding my tour down, trying to get processed out of there and not being able to wait until I got back home to the states and could take control of my life again. It was almost as though my life was on autopilot. My bills were being paid without me doing anything, my children were being raised by friends from church and life as I knew it had gone on smoothly in my absence. Imagine being plucked from your home and everything familiar...it's hard to imagine that everyone would move on and function, both you and those that you left behind but it does happen. It happens a lot.
What I don't think a lot of civilians can really appreciate is how military people can go from being complete strangers to almost family in such a short amount of time. The ones I keep in touch with I consider friends and the ones I do not keep in touch with I also keep in my heart. I think of them often. Maybe not every day, or maybe not even every week, but when I reflect on my time there, or maybe even just hearing a news report about the war will take me back. Sometimes the rocks on my long gravel driveway remind me of walking through the camps and thinking about how much I hated rocks and wished for smooth pavement and sidewalk to be under my feet. I will see a conex (those big containers you see on the back of trucks and railcars) and I immediately think of how they littered the base. Storage in a place where so much there is temporary...buildings, tents, structures that just weren't meant to be in place very long. That aside, there are so many things that take me back there.
My joy at returning to the states was met by my discovery that in a little over a year I would probably be deployed again. I had two fears with this. The first was that it might cause more trauma to my children and the second was that, unlike the one I had just returned from, the next deployment might not be so pleasant or in such a safe place. Seriously, Afghanistan is just not safe at all, but being deployed to a large installation in a relatively safe region left me with little reason to complain.
So, I retired. I did it relatively quickly and without all the planning that I should have placed with this event. However, I knew it was what I needed to do....and here I am. I guess if I am supposed to have some great point here, then I have failed miserably. The point that I do have is how much your life can change in such a short amount of time. The other point is that be careful about making plans...they rarely go the way you imagined they would.
Goodnight
