Endings….and Beginnings.

Lately for the first time I am truly unhappy with military life. Its the first time I’ve felt anything negative about it deep down. And I only felt that way because it’s the first time I’ve ever felt trapped by it.

Germany has its pluses. I like it here in the summer, I like the travel opportunities we have because we live here, and the summer festivals and Christmas Markets are great. But that’s where it ends. And unfortunately, those things are only about 10% of living here….which leaves 90% of life sucking pretty badly.

There’s this thing called an ERD – Early Release of Dependents – that can allow me to move back to our Home of Record with the kids and have Julls finish out his assignment here without us. However, I won’t separate my children from their father, I think the military may do that for us enough over the next 15 or so years through training exercises, TDY’s, and deployments. I want my family together whenever we can be. i think it’s important.

Even when Julls was deployed when Felix was a baby and missed his first birthday, I wasn’t unhappy. My mom came and stayed with me for 6 weeks over summer break and I had great, supportive friends.

But here, come November, all the friends that I spend time with the most will be gone. And I will have the next 10 months to be very lonely. And since that will be the start of another long winter, I will also be very cold and very depressed….again.

The winter weather here starts in September, and it stays cold until May. That’s a lot of time spend inside looking out at the cold, gray, dreary sky. I’m a Florida girl through and through. I need the sun and fresh air to be happy. I really hope that our travels over the next several months and the holidays that follow pass the time quickly. I’m ready for a fresh start and a chance to start over again.

Speaking of which, Natalie and Thomas and Sarah and Hunter just left. We spent their last night with them in their room in TLF playing Phase 10. It was a great goodbye. They are now bound for Barksdale for their fresh start in Louisiana. I wish them all the best and look forward to visiting them in June when I hop home with the kids to soak up the sun in Florida.

I really thought that I wanted to go straight back to FL when we left here. I’m a lot more open minded about it though as people around us are getting orders to new places. There’s a lot of world out there to go see and FL will still be there when we retire if we decide that we want to go back. Not that I will completely complain if we do get orders to Florida again. At least there we know what we are in for.

But for now, I will try my best to put on a smile and hope for the best as we watch all of our friends head off for new lives elsewhere. Cheers to them all. They will be greatly missed.