So I retracted into my antisocial lifestyle and spent the rest of the summer keeping myself entertained. I hurriedly booked a climbing trip to Thaialnd with an old high school friend and had a blast there. The rest of my time was spent rock climbing, longboarding, and just waiting around for what I thought would be a mid-winter departure. I entered into a phenomenal relationship with the girl and told her that even though I was leaving soon, I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. She ok'd it and we had wonderful times together. I explored a good chunk of the island and lived life as someone who had several months of freedom would. Then the news came. Seeing as how no one had ever heard of a thing like this, no one knew where to find information for the deployment. Everything I knew was what I had found on google. Then I got an email stating that I had training in 2 weeks starting at the end of May! This was WAY earlier than I thought I was leaving. I knew I had training but I thought it would only be a month and that i wouldn't leave unitl early October sometime. I was shocked. I had mixed feelings of excitement and dread. I had viewed this deployment as a way out of the lifestyle I had been lkiving and a way to ot get tied down to anything but now I had already gotten comfortable with where I was in life. I had a good job with good rank and a great girl and lots of great toys and adventurous weekends and now I was gonna have to give it up. I thought it wouild be ok as it was only for a week and a half, perhpas more. I prepare my things and say my goodbyes and arrive in the states at training with no transportation, no idea how to get to base, and a small hotel reservation. I met someone in the airport who was also attending the training and hopped a ride with her to my hotel which no one else from the training happened to be staying in. I waited an yhour for a taxi to the base in the morning and paid $40 then hitched a ride at the gate to the schoolhouse. Once I arrived, I found out that no longer was my training only 1 1/2 week, it was actually going to be 4 1/2 MONTHS TOTAL!!! AHHHH!!! So much for my summer in Okinawa.
So after 1 1/2 months of teraining was over, I got to go back to Okinawa for 20 days which was basically spent running around like a chiken with its head cut off trying to get ready for the depoloyment and combat training I would wsoon be attedning. This is the most maddening time period I have ever been through. To this day, I stilll have not quite accomplished everything I needed to get done. I remorsefully said a teary goodbye to my girlfriend and an adieu to my friends and hopped on a plane for Indiana. Let me tell you, this was like nothing I have ever or likely will ever experience again. If you've never worked with the Army, it's a heck of a ride. This would be the beginning of the craziest, most stressful, maddening, chaotic time of my life as of yet.
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