Home!

Coming home turned out to be a lot weirder for me that I thought it was going to be. The days leading up to my leave seemed to take forever but when the day finally came I had some kind of weird anxiety thing going on. I don’t really know how else to explain it. The first 5 days seemed to go by fairly slowly but after that they just seemed to fly by.

Three things stand out the most to me about my time at home on leave. Number one would be all the different colors. Everything over here is a brown reddish color. Occasionally you will see a house that is pink or purple but other than that it is mostly plain Jane. Green grass, trees with the changing leaves, different colored houses, different colored lights downtown, peoples colorful clothes, total culture shock. I actually went on several walks around town admiring all the different colors.

The number two thing that stood out while I was home was my complete inability to get any decent sleep for the first 5 days back. The realization that I eventually came to was that it was way too quiet. Over here there is always some type of noise whether it is the helicopters at the airfield or the generators that are constantly running. I am sure that jet lag figured in there also. All I know for absolute sure is that in that first 5 day period I only got about 20 hours sleep total. I also seemed to be in military mode for those first few days where I was totally wound up. After a few days I seemed to get used to the idea that I was actually back home. And of course by the time I felt completely at ease and relaxed it was time to go back.

But I have to say the biggest thing that I noticed while I was at home was how much nothing had changed. In this whole period of time where I felt like I had already lived a whole separate lifetime of doing things everyone back home had not done much except exist on a daily basis. I don’t want folks back home to take this the wrong way so let me explain myself. I was extremely elated to see as many people as I did and I thoroughly enjoyed my time at home and hanging with my friends, but at the same time I quickly grew bored and actually looked forward to coming back to Iraq. I think that part of it was the fact that most people had to work during the day so the only time I could hang out with folks was at night. But coming from a situation where I work 7 days a week and then going to a schedule of having nothing to do all day took some adjustment. I also think that with all the experiences I have had in the last 6 months, experiences that most people will never have (probably a good thing), made being home all the much weirder.

Before all my friends start thinking that I hated being home I will add some of the highlights of my trip:
Seeing Heather who was the last friend from the states that I saw before I left and hanging out with her for a night was awesome. Playing with my dog Smokey and sleeping on the couch with him. Pizza. Sleeping in a real bed. Drinking was cool but hangovers were not. Being able to smoke inside was a nice change. Hanging out in Trevors backyard and chatting.Hanging out with Lyn, Vinnie & krystal. Ron & Lisa's guy falkes day party. Hanging out with Jim A.,Stacy,Carly and Rob for Dart night. Seeing all my friends at the Arena and Blind Pig. Dinner at Knights steak house with my mom. Driving where ever I wanted to when ever I wanted to. Complete and total freedom. Real food with actual nutrients that have not been completly processed out of them. Fall colors. Raking leaves ( yes I actually enjoyed doing it ). Being able to choose what clothes I was going to wear.

Another thing about going home was the fact that I was in really good shape before I left. But while I was home, due to my own lack of motivation, I managed to gain about 10 pounds which took about 3 weeks to get rid of. There was also the whole traveling aspect. To put it simply the traveling to and from leave was absolutely horrible. You are literally treated like cattle during the whole process which really just sucks. I also had the austere pleasure of flying out of Detroit on Veteran’s day which was a strange experience to say the very least. A lot of people wanted to shake my hand and thank me for my service which was a good feeling. But on the other hand I was leaving home and not in the highest of spirits and talking to a bunch of strangers over and over again was a little overwhelming. There was one guy in the Atlanta airport that got my spirits back up with his simple statement of “ thank you for serving, go get those bastards for us” which for some reason brought my spirits back up. I am not saying that I do not appreciate the thank you’s I get just that sometimes it get’s to be a bit much.

In the end I would have to say that although I very much enjoyed seeing all my friends and family I almost wish I had never gone home on leave at all. Part of that stems from the fact that I had a sort of groove going over here and time was flying by for me. Then I went home and that groove was disrupted for about 5 weeks. It was hard to get back into things once I returned and time just seemed to crawl by. Of course the Army keeps rolling along and did not care that I was not back in my groove yet. Because 1 day after I returned I had the awesome pleasure of pulling 5 missions in a row. Talk about jumping in with both feet.