It's a rant. Just pass along. :)

So tomorrow, Obama will be in my hometown for like .. 6 hours. My boyfriend has to listen to him talk about how he wants to have our troops pulled out of Iraq by August of 2010 and how we're deploying about 12,000 more troops to Afghanistan to stop more terrorism.

I don't know who reads these, but this is going to be my constant topic of debate. I'm not overly obsessed with a boy, I'm overly obsessed with a war that I don't think is our problem anymore. I don't know how many of you have come in contact with a GOOD Marine, (one that opens your door and has manners) but mine is one of them. I don't understand why we have to deploy these sorts of good people to fight a fight that shouldn't have been started in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I support our troops 100% .. My dad is a colonel in the Corps and I'll support him till the day I die .. And then in Heaven. But I'm sick of hearing casualty counts and hearing civilians tell me how they hate this war. I GET IT. I LIVE THIS STUFF EVERY SINGLE DAY. I'm told EVERY DAY that the man I fell in love with might not come home. I'm told EVERY DAY that my friends and my friends parents could be leaving on a moments notice.

So PLEASE don't ask me if I'm going to miss any of my friends that deploy. Don't ask me if I support the war. DON'T ask me why I wait or how I do this.

Some of you don't know what you want to do with your lives. I'm not going to be the average enlisted housewife .. I'm going to make something of myself with a good career and a driving passion. But the first thing I'm going to do is be a good friend. I'm going to be a good girlfriend on top of that and I'm ready to support my boyfriend and any of my other deploying friends in their endeavours.

I wish that more people understood what it was like to date a Marine. You cry about not being able to see your loved one for two weeks .. I don't see mine for 10 months. But not everyone is strong enough to do what girls like me do. God only knows how many people are faithful in their relationships anymore.

:)

Essay Topic

For this short fiction essay, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be picking question number 1. It's not that I could relate to either the Lottery or I'm sure the other story, but I'm positive that I will be able to attend to language and imagery better than I could any other literary term.

I think this essay will be easier to write because short fiction is easier to dissect than poetry. The music aspect of the last essay was really cool to incorporate, but I like reading short fiction more than poetry, therefore I'm pretty sure I can get a better paper out of it.

I also think that it's sort of American to compare violence. We watch WWE and other violent TV shows, so I think writing about violent stories will be just as easy as watching a show and writing a review.

So in total, I'm picking question one. It will be the easiest to write and the entertainment value I will be able to put in this essay question will be higher than any of the others.

:)

Long Time Coming

Spring break is TOTALLY around the corner. We've got one more weekend here before we head home for what I think is a well deserved break from hell. (Not that school is hell, but all the work and waking up is.) I know most people are going to try and work .. But me, I'm definitely planning on relaxing with the significant other while I can and chill with my mom while she's still feeling okay. I've worked every spring break since freshman year of high school and I just want a minute to myself.

So I dedicate this spring break to a couple things.
1) Making time to prepare for this upcoming deployment.
2) Hanging out with my mom and kicking some serious ass at Scrabble.
3) Reading a book without a lot of pictures and understanding its real meaning.
4) Getting closer to my dad and brother since I never see them anymore.

I think I'm really going to dedicate this spring break to a recovered piece of mind so I can come back to school and finish the year out strong. I'm ready for summer and some well deserved tanning time at the beach.

:)
Good luck the next two weeks! Spring break ready to rock and roll.

Third Person Preview

She opened her phone to some of the most devastating news imaginable. Her boyfriend would be deploying to Afghanistan seven months before he was supposed to. It wasn't as though she was ready to hear this sort of news. He calls and says, "are you sitting down? You should if you aren't."

So she sits. She sits and she begins to panic. All the things that could have gone wrong in the past and what he could be thinking right now start to run through her head. "Did I do something wrong? Are we not going to be together anymore?" They're the hard questions that no one person ever wants to try and answer.

He begins to spill the beans. "We're leaving in April. We'll be gone a decent amount of time and I know that we can get through this. I just need your support. Can we do this?"

She doesn't exactly know how to reply. They'll have been together for 5 months which is a good starting point, but 10 months apart could tear apart everything at the seams. It's not so much a panic anymore as reality sets in. He's really going to be leaving soon. There is no more time to worry about it, just time to live each day to its fullest as a couple.

The next morning, she calls his mom. She explains the situation and tries to get the point across that she is going to need every ounce of support to make this relationship work. He promised that if they got through this deployment, that at the end of her school years, he'd propose. Marriage was a definite possibility for this girl.

The situation being spoken, it has sunk in. She realized he was everything to her. He was going to go and come home and their lives together would really begin..

Recognition

So I never thought that peer reviews were helpful until we had this last batch of them. I had two people look over my paper, three including Brett, and for once it helped in my favor.

The first person that looked over my paper I want to thank. I appreciate the fact that there is another soul on earth who can be constructive and not completely destroy my paper. He looked over everything and his comments made me realize that the errors I made were definitely ones that needed to be fixed. He left comments that were of a good nature as well as ones that were just there to simply help and I can say that I'm very happy he introduced himself that morning in class.

This not only taught me that peer reviews can be helpful, but it also taught me not to be scared to introduce yourself to someone completely out of the blue; you never know where or when in life it's going to come in handy.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day ... So happy v-day to all you sap-sucker couples like myself .. Hope the day is simply a dream.

(:

Marine Choice

So it has officially been 40 since I saw my boyfriend ..

I am dating a Marine. If not the toughest, it's one of the hardest jobs you could ever imagine. It's not a by choice kind of thing that you get seperated from the person you're supposed to be with kind of situation.

A lot of people ask why I put myself in these kinds of situations. The possibility of your loved one not coming home is sometimes hard to bear, but you do it for the thought of what the homecoming is going to be like. Long deployments, harsh fights .. It all comes in the job description.

Most people don't understand why people in college have long distance relationships. I'd know, I used to be one of those people. But no one really takes the time to consider how it feels the minute they come back home from a 7 month deployment. You don't really know what it's like to be in something truly long distance till you've seen the relationship between a marine and spouse. It's a relationship that can't be described to a civilian and can't be described to someone who has never had to put that much trust into something that could completely change while they are deployed.

It's always a never know relationship. Things happen and people change .. You just have to be ready on a moments notice to accept it and move forward.

-LD

TGIF

Exams are almost over, one more to go next week.
(Thank God it's Friday.)

This has been one of the more stressful weeks of second semester. Trying to balance social life and school, getting calls from California at a decent hour and going out with mom, it's a tough job. Our drafts are due in like, 72 hours almost and I'm NOT ready for that. I've had to change my arguement twice and I don't really know how I'm going to go about routing the entire paper. I know what I want to say, but I definitely need a good enough arguement to get an A.

Next week is going to be interesting .. So now is the appropriate time to throw out my Valentine's Day shpeal:

People hate Valetine's Day when they don't have a Valentine. Yes, I realize that this is a completely made up holiday. For reference, Scientology is a completely made up religion, but we still believe in Tom Cruise (blegh) and what he stands for when it fits our circumstances. I've had the same Valentine for three years now, my best friend from back home. We make each other these RIDICULOUS cards and have good laughs about when we were in 8th grade and didn't know we existed to one another. I'm not so cynical about Valentine's Day anymore because I know I've got the significant other to spend it with, but if that ever failed, I know Pot would be there for me. (That's my best friend, btw. Not the drug.)

If you're not a fan on V-Day.. Don't go around spouting how it sucks, please. No one really cares that much. Buy yourself a cute and funny card, some chocolate, watch a movie and call it a day. It doesn't always have to be about spending it with someone else, make yourself happy for the day.

That's probably why I'm not a philosopher.

I'm very cynical about people who don't like the day because I do now.

Haha.

It's funny.

Such a flip flopper.

Social vs. School

I never took into consideration how much things at home affected things in the classroom. I didn't realize that just because someone can smile in a class, it doesn't mean that they have it altogether.

Being a military brat comes with some high job qualifications. You have to be able to pick up and leave on a moments notice and you have to hold your head high when you realize a loved one is deploying. It's hard watching shows like the Real World with people like Ryan who blow up PTSD and continue to bash the war.

EVERYONE dies. EVERY single body will come to an end. When it's your time to go, you're gonna go. We had a family friend who was a Catholic priest for 22 years pull over to the side of the road to help a man get a tree off the road so they could continue driving. Right after they moved the tree, another one fell, landed on our friend, and ended his life.

I don't like writing about sad things, but there is stuff in like that is just unpreventable. There is no way to evade death. You can prolong life, you can try to beat the system, but it's going to happen to everyone. Some circumstances are worse off than others, but it's going to happen.

I'm trying to figure out a healthy way to not think about the whole "the love of my life is going to war" issue and how to deal with not having my significant other home. It's not easy listening to people talk about the war in a negative tone and not say something. I'm not completely for it since the reason we went in is not the same reason we are leaving with. But I completely support my boyfriend and every other service member overseas. Leaving family and friends behind is by far the hardest thing anyone could do.

So in total, I'm trying to not think about the circumstance. It's not always easy to smile and deep down, it does affect daily life. But I think the motivation to move forward and provide an image for woman of military background of "I'm strong and I can get through this tour" is worth the pain and committment.