I'm just sad.

Disclaimer: I am, indeed, emotional.

Big hot tears roll down my face as I drive away from my "family's" house headed back to Camp Atterbury, Indiana after a too short four day pass at home for Thanksgiving. It was a good day. A hard day, but still a good day. If my emotions could be personified, riding a roller coaster--they would be sick to the point of vomiting.
Rewind to this morning:
:-) I woke up happy in my own very warm bed, ate a delicious breakfast of grits and yogurt with Michigan blueberries handpicked by family friends, took a shower and proceeded to get back into ARMY mode.
:-( Army socks, boots, pants, shirt, jacket.....and....I'm a soldier again. This time for a long time. :-) Mom and I ran some errands, did some last minute packing and headed over to Grammy's house to say goodbye's there.
:-( Gram didn't take it too well, but it helped that Aunt Ginger and Uncle Bob were there with Harmony to help soften the hurt. Even if I was gone, she still had them there at least until tomorrow. So a sad goodbye for them, but not so much for me.
:-) It was sad....but I was also excited to go see my 'other' family :-) in Forsyth. Away we went!!

Let me pause this roller coaster ride to say how grateful I am to ALL of my family, related and unrelated, immediate and extended, friends who are family, and family who are friends. I am thankful for each and every one of you. We had a discussion after a delicious thanksgiving meal with a second cousin about how our 'family' has spread to the winds and we don't have the kinds of communication needed to keep that family bond together. It's no one's fault per se, but it is just fact. And the fact of the matter is, besides the Thanksgiving meal and an occasional Christmas gathering at someone's house....we are strangers to each other. My cousins don't know anything about me, nor do my aunts and uncles. The information they do know about me, they must find out from someone other than myself because I never talk to them. We don't talk on the phone, write letters, email, text, or even Facebook. All of these avenues of communication are open, and I have set up different trips throughout the years to visit different members of my family who I would like to be closer to and these trips have deepened the original bond of family.
No matter what, we share some DNA and in some cases the same name.

But this is not what I need. I am the only child of a single mother. Smart, athlete, outgoing, dedicated and focused on success. I have no father to speak of, which eliminates half of my blood related family right there. Imagine it as a lightening striking dead half of my tree. Therefore, I am already short changed on the family tree. Add in the fact that there is no communication. No water going to the branches of my remaining scrawny family tree, I am not left with very much to go off of. I have some roots, my grandmother and mother, myself as the trunk, and a couple of branches (selected aunts and uncles, one or two cousins) and a few leaves (young babies of said cousins) So, please don't blame me if I prefer to pick up my roots, grow wings, and find happiness elsewhere. In a perfect world in my situation, extended family would have picked up the slack and we would have been a tight family unit. But, that is hard to do when we span the entire United States. No one's fault...just not what I need.

God has blessed me. I have been given a loving, caring home where I fit in and belong. When I look back at my life and think of all the good memories, I realize that I have had a family all along. There has been hurt and pain. Love and Joy. Sadness and suffering. We have fallen apart and come back together. I love them. They love me.
I am so proud of my little sister. She is one of the smartest, talented, most ambitious people I know and I can't wait to see what kind of beautiful woman she will become. I love that we're so close, I only wish that we were closer.
My little brother and I are closer than I even think I know. He has almost every baseball player, team and stat memorized. He is amazing at putting together, in weeks, a 3,000 piece Lego set that is supposed to take months. And he is one of the strongest people I know. He is constantly amazing me with his patience and good spirit in bad times. Life wouldn't be the same without him. I love him to death, even though he'd be mad at me for saying it publicly....I know he loves me back! :)
Mom-mom, perfect title since she is my second mom. My own mother is wonderful, and I am grateful for her and everything that she has, and continues to do for me--but even she is grateful that I have a grounded family atmosphere to partake in and this is what mom-mom provides for us all. She is THE most amazing, strong, structured, intelligent, fun, happy go lucky person I have ever met in my life and she is solely responsible for this Cinderella story. If it wasn't for her introducing herself to my mother, and my mother offering my babysitting services...I wouldn't be typing this today. I want to be just like her someday.
The Orr/Thompson family has welcomed me into their lives with open arms since 1999 and has never let me go. It is because of this that I feel so loved when I go home. I love to see Grama and Grampa, see what kinds of sewing or wood or redecorating or technology projects are going on around the house (or condo, if we happen to meet up in Colorado) and honestly I could go on and on about how happy I am. The real point to all this writing is to get out my emotions for myself, the bi-product being an insight to my mind. I feel like I have written enough this evening to get out enough emotion in order to sleep well.






I am not sad anymore. As cheesy as it sounds I am now full of memories and love as I swaddle myself in "Dad's" company sweatshirt as a security blanket.
Two days and a wake up, and I will be on a plane to a whole new world.

I am home.

racing thoughts, racing thoughts....
I have been home, the place where I was raised, for a little more than 24 hours now.
We started the drive home as soon as I was released around 1200, after a quick break for lunch at Crackel Barrel we continued on. I called ahead to inform my 'family' that we should have dinner as I passed through and I was informed that because of health complications this would not be possible, but a few of us could still go out for something.

Here I am. Sitting here typing. Trying to be completely vague, but I don't want to. I want to say how frustrating this whole situation is. I don't want to go, I don't have enough time with the people I love. And, even worse, because of some stupid illness that decided to invade the life of the people who I've chosen to be my family-I can barely see them at all. It isn't fair, really. I see myself sitting upstairs on the couch talking to mom-mom who is sitting in the brown chair about life. About how much I don't think I can do this. About being surrounded by people who seem slow, and how to deal with it. About feeling alone, but being surrounded by people. And you know what? She tells me, somehow in her own words, that everything is going to be okay. And I believe her. Because she has never lied to me. I love her, and I am scared to death to be away. My sister needs me more than ever, and soon enough I won't even be able to text her every once in awhile...how am I supposed to make sure that everything is okay if I am approx. 7,000 miles away??

I once said that I don't write at night because there are too many uncontrollable emotions...but isn't that what writing is??? Emotions..flowing, streaming, bursting through the floodgates of your mind down your arms into your fingertips and onto the keyboard to print into black and white what is going on in the sea of thoughts and ideas you call your brain.

Well, tonight and all day, as well as yesterday---all I can think about is that the point of this four day pass was to spend time with family. I will, indeed, spend time with extended family. But my mom-mom, my sister, my brother, I might get to see them on Friday morning before I leave to go back. I can't see them because I don't want to risk getting the woman who already has an extremely low white blood cell count and an infection more sick. Its a conundrum, really.
I was told in my childhood that God never gives us more than we cannot handle. I believe that with all my heart and soul, and when He gives me lemons, I make sweet lemonade. But, I also believe in 'living in it'

It is important not to just brush every emotion or feeling to the side and slap a smile on your face. It is important to 'embrace the suck' while it is happening. Hold close to you things that make you hurt, cry, lonely...so that later on in life, you can recognize these feelings and know better how to deal with them. If you are sad, be sad--cry, use up a whole box of kleenex, talk to someone, stay silent, scream if it makes you feel better. Whatever it takes, live it. Then let it go. If you are angry or upset, try to watch what you say to others..but be mad, punch a pillow, throw the son of a bitch across the room, who cares? Live it, then quickly let it go. The key is, letting it go. If you don't let it go, it will embrace you. However, the same goes for happiness and love. The only difference is to not let these go. If you are happy, or feel love...hold on for dear life because you never know when anger, or fear, or sadness will try to come grab onto you again. But when it does, you will know what each one feels like and will know how to handle it.

So, as I type, I feel it. I feel the sadness, the feeling of unfairness, the disappointment that things aren't the way I planned in my head. But I have felt these things before and have been happy since then. And so I know that, even today, I have been happy. I have felt joy. I know that when I leave, I will have a mix of bitter sadness and excitement with anticipation. I will embrace it, just like every other time. And, of course, I will write.

The calm before the storm..

...sand storm, that is!

Well hello everyone!! Most everyone reading this, I will see in the next week whether you know it or not :) And I couldn't be more excited!

There has been quite the lull in my posts for multiple reasons. The most debilitating was the crashing of my hard drive. I was SO upset!! I think it fell off a foot locker (box at the end of a bed about a foot high, most resembling a chest) and it messed it up. BIG TIME. I was running a bunch of programs and they started running real slow, so I restarted the computer only to have it reboot to a gray screen with a flashing question mark. No good. So I called Apple to report the issue and see what my options were....after talking to them for hours on the phone and crying to one poor customer service guy about how I had less than two weeks to get this issue fixed and I was leaving the country and how my computer was my main source of communicating with my family...I was advised to call the company who installed my new hard drive this past July. I did, and they said that it would be no problem and that the repair was most likely covered under warranty! This coupled with the check I would receive from Apple for the hard drive failing left me coming out on top!! My computer was gone for 5 days and I got it back the day before we left for the field for 5 days and there was no way that I was going to take my newly repaired computer out to the field! So, another 5 days of no means to post...

Now, I am sitting in my rack--eyeballs hurting because I'm so tired--but also so excited. My mom is sitting in a hotel less than an hour away only waiting for the sun to come out to come get me and take me home!! Oh, home!! It brings a tear to my eye. I miss home. This whole experience the past two months has made me appreciate everything that I have had the past 23 years, and I just want it back.
Tonight, the girls from 1st platoon celebrated our 'thanksgiving' together with pizza and coke :) we played spades and shared about each other. It was a really great time and I honestly enjoyed myself. I talked with my bunk mate tonight after everyone left our 'house' (see photo) about how our platoon has the most bonded females out of everyone. If you haven't lived with 50 females with NO personal space, please do not even try to understand. Everyone has something to say ALL the time. There are some people who I really can not comprehend how they can have that much negativity before breakfast! It's like they wake up angry at the world. But, tonight, we really bonded and it was good for us. I finally shared with the other girls (my battle, White, has already been knowing) about Clare and my story, which I think completely shocked them, and we all really had a good time hanging out.
Tomorrow by this time I will be in MY bed!

I would write more, but I am too anxious to even talk about feelings. That will have to come another day!! :)

ps one week from tomorrow I'll be on a plane to the Middle East.