Frosty the Snowman plays cheerfully on TV, sexy women in Christmas lingerie scroll across my computer screen and outside, our sirens are alerting us we are under attack; tonight it's just a drill. Just another hum-drum night on Camp Adder.
I sit back and chuckle silently and know that some day I will look back on my time here and try to make sense of it all. Someday I will be sitting at a desk somewhere doing something mundane that will seem so urgent and important at that time to someone, but not to me. I think I will find it hard to fall back into the mindless repetition that was my life before this war.
I think back to when I was home for few weeks last summer and how I found it hard to stress about things in the real world like I once did. I find it hard not to chuckle when my family and friends complain about things going wrong in their life and remember that I too once lived an over-dramatized soap opera of a life not too long ago.
I have a much different outlook on life these days. I have different ideas on what I will value most in the years to come. I'm sure I will someday look back at these past couple years and consider it the defining moment in my life; when my life came sharply in focus. I find comfort in knowing that I am a better person than I was.
In the land of the biblical beginning, I have found an enlightenment that has erupted at my very core. I have been blessed with ability to find a better place within myself and accept that the mistakes I have made in the past, have also contributed to character of man I am today.
I am thankful for the many family and friends that have been a constant influence in my life this past year. There was a time when I wanted to forget about everyone and just do what I came to do, but they never let me forget that there is a better life, better times, waiting for me back home.
I am proud to serve my country. I am proud to have been in Iraq during a time when absolute and quantified positive results are so evident in the beginning of a prospering Iraq. I am also, however, so thankful that my tour is almost over and I will be coming home to begin a new chapter in my life as well.