I'm tired. I don't feel like writing, but I know that I should. Driver and I are staying up late late late -- it always starts with "we should go to bed early" and always ends with "I don't want to go to bed yet!" We'll sit down, snuggle up, start talking and within a half hour we're both passed out cold. No one ever wakes us. Hours later one of us will shake the other awake and mumble something about getting back to our own bunks. Kiss goodnight, slip inside the barracks, and crash. I groan when my alarm goes off in the morning.
Driver has been back from his mission for more than a week. It feels strange, to have him here for so long. We have no idea of when he's leaving again. Rather than enjoying it, part of me wonders when he'll plop down at lunch and tell me that he has to pack up and go. Really, I get much more sleep when he's gone.
Life here is still dragging on. Routines are made, routines are broken, and it's all okay. This is life, and I am not thinking about life back home. I don't want to think about life back home. How in the world am I going to be able to go back to "normal" just like that? And how do those that have seen the gruesome part of this world go back to living the American Dream?
They asked for volunteers, so I volunteered. I deployed and spent a year in the sandbox. I came home. The Army decided I was too broken to serve any longer and gave me temporary medical retirement. I'm a civilian again and married right back in. My husband is gearing to deploy. In the meantime, I have a strange love-hate relationship with the Army. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't.
About Me
- Techno
- I'm a contradiction all by myself. Soldier and student. Stargazer and computer geek. Boots and music. Paper pusher and globetrotter. It all works out in the end.
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A bit of history...
There was a call for volunteers to deploy in Spring of 2006. I volunteered, was selected, passed the screening process, and was sent to reclassification training to go from being a bandsman to a human resource specialist. After graduation, I was home for roughly a month. I met the rest of my new unit right before we were sent to mobilization training. Once validated, we were sent overseas in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
I left university, quit my job, dumped my foreign boyfriend, and said a few very painful goodbyes. But I don't regret it one bit.
In early August, I was MEDEVAC'd out of the desert. My unit was just a few weeks away from going home. Now my only job is to get better. The irony is that they returned to their homes before I did.The Army has offered me disability and temporary retirement pay. I'm taking it. Bye bye combat boots.
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