It's Been A Year?

Already? As I'm sitting here and typing this in my new home here on the East Coast -- Charlotte, North Carolina to be exact -- tired from unpacking all of the moving boxes, I finally realized how fast time has flown. Amazing isn't it that only a year ago I was counting down the days until the end my career in government-mandated education and preparing to start college. Only ten months ago I had completed my first day as a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute. A scant five months ago I was Broken Out and finally a member of the Class of 2010; and then just last month, as of about 1400 hours on 16 May, I had officially completed my first year of college.

Now, I am living 3000 miles away from Los Angeles, California in beautiful North Carolina. I got home late on a Thursday night and was gone by Saturday afternoon, trucking down that long journey known as life. Sorry to sound a bit cliche, but it seemed to fit, what with the five days spent driving across the US of A. You really don't get a good grasp of just how huge this great land is until you drive across it.

So now begins something new; a new chapter in the story, if you will. I'll miss my friends but I was ready to move on from Los Angeles, at least that's what I tell myself. There are parts of me that will always yearn to be back in the City of Angels, in my old neighborhood, hanging out with my friends from high school. But I know that it can never be like it was before. I remember coming home from VMI over Christmas furlough and feeling like visitor in my home. It seemed like there was some great chasm between myself and all my friends. They hadn't changed a bit, but I certainly had. VMI had become my home and I had made new friends. VMI felt like home and I remember actually missing it while I was home, missing the companionship of the mutual suffering my BRs endured. But such is the way of the world, and everything changes eventually. Just to think, three years from now, I will be a college graduate all set to take on whatever challenge life sets before me.