I'm really lonely without the rest of my Hospital Corpsman A-School class here at Fort Sam Houston, TX.
I've spent 14 weeks with Class 220A since my arrival here on August 14, 2011.
14 weeks spent investing time and energy with those 50 freshly-minted Sailors, allowing myself to slowly break down the walls I built up during those seven weeks of boot camp and opening myself up to the possibilities of new friendships with these strange, new faces.
And just like that, with graduation coming and going, we all dispersed into the four winds.
With every passing day I remain on the base where I had spent the time cultivating my relationship with each and every one of them, their absence only serves as a painful reminder that everything I experience in the military is only temporary.
These friends I've made and will continue to make are temporary.
These exciting, eventful experiences I've lived and will live through with these friends are temporary.
These feelings of familiarity and consistency in the routines I develop are temporary.
And hopefully, for a boy who only wants to establish roots and make a solid foundation for himself, these frequently regenerating feelings of being lost and apprehension for starting all over again will be temporary, as well.