Week one

Where can I even start? It has been four days. If we'd been on a squadron deployment to Iraq, this would have been day one of being at Al Asad. It would feel just as though we had never left. And even with all the griping I've done about my two deployments, there is something comforting about knowing the routine of a place, and that nothing has changed.

This boat thing is something else entirely. I feel a little lost most of the time, and here I'm supposed to be one of the ones with all the answers. Have I ever said that that's what I like most about my job? Being an expert at something? Well, it is. I love knowing that if something goes wrong, I can make a fair guess about what's causing it and how to make it work. I like being able to answer people's questions. But here, it's the other way around, and I feel like the new kid all over again.

And I miss, miss, miss being in San Diego, for the first time. On my first trip to the desert I was eager to learn, and excited about the new experiences. I was so naive, and so hopeful. On my second trip there was Andrew, and the Marine Corps was only an inconvenience.

This time I left what could have been--and still could be, I know, six months from now--my life. My real life, my own life. There is no impending marriage to a medical student, no future pirate ship; I have been free to explore my own possibilities for the last year. I have learned things about myself that I didn't know, in this striking out from the confines of my old ideas, and in the certainty that my future is not as certain as I thought it was.

Perhaps this world cruise will be as instructive for me as my first dwelling in the desert of Babylon. There is the same scent of possibility in the air, although I know it points in a previously unexplored direction.

I want a place to call home, my home; I haven't had one in four and a half years. I know now, though, that no one can give it to me. I'm going to have to make it for myself. So I'm setting out to learn how.

Wish me luck.