Moving On - Chapter IV

About the second and third week of Basic Training is when soldiers started feeling homesick and missing their loved ones the most. Consequently, it is also when quite a few of our loved ones back home forgot about us.

It was week three when I received my “Dear John” letter. For those who don’t know, a “Dear John” letter is the one letter that everyone dreads receiving at Basic Training. It is the letter that announces from your girlfriend or wife that they would like to consider the option of seeing other people. As I’m sure most did, you then would write a very friendly and understanding response letter back to that person whom you care the most for letting them know that you completely understand and there are no hard feelings and that you can’t wait to become friends with these “other people”. Ok, so maybe most of these letters would involve quite a bit of explicit words and name calling, at least mine did.

This was the first time Drill Sergeant expressed a human emotion and taught me a valuable lesson. He said “Fuck her, move on”. He then gave me a tissue and told me I had one day to mope around about it, and after that I would be doing pushups every time I looked sad.

I took my one day, and to my surprise, Drill Sergeants words made sense; and I moved on. It felt good too. I felt like I had accomplished something. For the first time I did everything for me, and not for those who are back home, and it felt good. Finally I could focus on becoming the best soldier I could be and not be concerned with what was going on in my absence.

I remember that when you first get to Basic Training, you get to make one, one minute phone call. My call was to my mother. We were told that we would receive our next call at the end of the 4^th week, just so we could call home and let everyone know we made it through the first quarter of Basic Training. Everyone looked forward to the end of the 4^th week so that they could call their girlfriends and wives. Me, I called my mother again, and was happy with life. Happy to be free.

I know you’re wondering what the lesson was that I learned. Well, that was that anything that I can do for someone else, I can do it 100 times better for myself; as you’ll see towards the end of this adventure.