Day 322 Sept.4 2011

It first hit me around Christmas time, and then slapped me across the face a dozen times this summer when I traveled North.  Fort Polk has become my home.  I've developed such a good, strong, happy base of friends and activities over these past two years (surprising I know).  I'm sorry it took me this long, and that it took a deployment to force me into the world that Fort Polk had to offer.  I think the first year we were here, I was too caught up in expectations, and what wasn't here to see what and who was here.  I think the excitement of being the first "real" place to move with my new husband, starting a family, and meeting new people was all too distracting.  Everything that I did and everyone I met, so on a very shallow level.  I didn't and couldn't commit or dive deeper into anything - and I didn't even realize I could.  The consequences were that I felt disconnected and excluded and out of the loop.  I had my attention split in too many directions.  I hate to say it, but with my husband gone, I was able to look outside of the house a little bit, and really focus on my girl friends and build some really strong relationships.  A few months into the deployment, I was struggling with some of these relationships.  I was still in the "out of the loop/excluded" funk.  I hadn't learned that I need to let go of my expectations and if those relationships are not what I wanted them to be, I needed to try someone else, or refocus my energies on other activities that do make me happy.  I finally found my little niche in this world down here  and have started to notice that those struggling relationships I mentioned before, are no longer strained.  We would go weeks in between visits, and then hang out one night and have a great night and end it with "we should do this more often", and then days would go by with no word.  And I would get upset, and frustrated, and feel left out.  But since I gave up on those expectations, when I do get to see these friends, we still have an incredible time together, and yes, we will probably go another 2 weeks before we see each other, but it no longer bothers me.  It's no longer haunting my thoughts while I'm trying to listen to a story one of them is telling me.  It's heightened the time that I do get to spend with them, even if each visit is few and far between.

Lesson #1,529 learned during this deployment:

Not all friendships are the same.  Not all friendships should be the same.  There is something special and unique about each friendship because not all people are the same.  No two personalities are the same, so no two combinations of personalities would ever make the same product.  Why would you ever expect to have the same thing with one person that you or they have with someone else.  It's a totally and completely irrational expectation.  The trick is to find what's awesome about each friendship you have.  If you only see that person once in a blue moon, maybe it's the fact that you feel like it hasn't been 3 weeks since you've seen each other- that is a pretty unique and handy trait to have in a friendship.

Today's picture has nothing to do with friendships...it's the completion of the "Mystery Squash Saga".  What do you think, is it a zucchini?  or a pumpkin?