Being away from home taught me what true friendship is and what it is to be a true friend as well. But, in the back of your mind you know that one day you will have to say goodbye. It is then those friends who hold you tight and cry with you as you say goodbye, possibly forever. Then you have to start over again.
So here you are: a new base and new neighbors and new people. You make friends, you trust them and you take them in and treat them with so much respect. You’re thinking that again you have found good people, but soon you realize they are not. You trusted too soon and too easily. Let me tell you this: South Dakota is not Alaska when it comes to generosity of people. I’ve learned that you have to make friends quick because soon all of us will be moving on—so you’re evaluation isn’t as good as it should be. The people that you thought were your friends are not and in times of grief in your personal family, in times of death and pain, they are spreading things that aren’t true or talking about you and cussing you out. I have learned from this base like I did in Alaska. This base has taught me that sometimes it is best to stick to yourself and take care of your family. They are definitely more important. It makes you realize that the long distance phone calls to Alaska or text messages and e-mails are your true friends. The ones who cry with you when your family member dies, who call to check on you and make sure you are okay. Not the ones who say oh well get over it. It is those people that cause too much stress and that I don’t need in life. They cause rifts in my relationship to my husband a strain I don’t need.
That’s another thing, I have learned that marriage is a two way street and a job itself. I’ve made it five years in mine, ten if you count dating. I have had to children with plans for more and let me tell you there were times that I wanted to walk away. I knew it just had to be easier on the other side of the fence. I step back and realize that this man, this occasionally stubborn, opinionated, blunt man has given me something that no one else ever could—my two beautiful children and he loves me for me.
