1st combat deployment to the Middle East; 1st epic voyage. I’d crossed my first continent a few times by this point, but never an ocean or foreign one. This was a whole new level for me, and one I embraced wholeheartedly. I was so excited, relieved, and happy to have finally made it over there, all the nightmarish betrayals, heartache, poverty, starvation, wounds, surgery, recovery, and grueling initial training behind me.
Month Titles
I deploy with my first battalion this week. We’re going to Iraq. These men are boys. They are fools and scum. This might surely get me killed. I am scared.
Arriving in Kuwait, I am so relieved that I am nearly on the opposite side of the planet from my evil fake family; I’d practically have to go into Outer Space to get any farther from them, so I am quite safe and at peace, and ready to kick some similar-evildoer ass. The heat is like a hot-air dryer on my face, though, even at night, and I wonder if I will be able to handle it for the more than half a year we are scheduled to fight here.
Sneaking back to Texas after this deployment, I reconnect with my ex’s wonderfully understanding and supportive mother, and my ex’s asshole brother’s own ex meets me at a hotel in hopes of having sex with me all night. She even openly says she wants to help soothe me after the horrible end I was forced to experience due to my mother and the corrupt authorities interfering. This is my first big victory against him. Unfortunately, though, she manages to talk me into trying my first beer one night, and I have regretted compromising my values in this way ever since; it wasn’t worth it at all. Not at all.
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More pics of this deployment are here and here.
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