Closing a Chapter

I have now been in the US Navy for nearly 4 years.  I lived in Japan for about 3 and a half of those.  Now that I’ve left that country without expectation that I will ever return I can’t help but glance back in wonder over the entire experience.  It can easily be very clearly divided into two sections.  The Japan part, and the military part.  The good and the bad.  The video above obviously deals with the former.

I will, without doubt, miss Japan.  Its quirks, its people, its cities, its landscape…  It will have a special place in my heart for the rest of my life.  It has played host to some of my best and worst moments.  Joyus occasions, intense frustrations, perfect days and long heartaches.  True, much happened to me over my time there.  More than most know.  More than I could explain to those that don’t.  And I didn’t get to see absolutely everything I would have liked to, but I left more than satisfied with all I had been able to do.  I walked countless miles along its streets exploring its cities, both new and old.  I learned to fit cars into places I didn’t think physically possible and I was crammed into trains that I thought would burst at their bolted seams.  I watched the cherry blossoms bloom and fall around temples built long before my own country.  I tasted more kinds of sea life than I’d care to recount.  I skiied its mountains in the winter, I surfed its oceans in the summer and I watched the sunrise from its highest peak.   Indeed, when reading these summarized memories my time there seems to have been quite nice, adventurous even.  And parts of it were, but unfortunately these parts were a minority…  Small points of light scattered in darkness.

In truth the majority of my time there was spent behind a computer, working 12 hour shifts, relentlessly switching from days to nights every two weeks.  A menial a job where, in the course of my day and in all of my work, I accomplished close to nothing while serving a government and system that I have come to truly despise.  When not at work, the immediate environment in which I found myself reminded me of a twisted, unbearable, version of highschool with immaturity, ignorance and hypocrisy reigning supreme.  If I have learned one thing from all of this, it is that I do not belong anywhere near, much less in, the US military and that I cannot put it in my rear-view fast enough.  And nothing confirms this more than the treatment I am now receiving as I finally check out of the Navy at a base in Washington State.  I served my 4 years honorably and I did so better than most… yet now as I am on my way out the door I am treated with a certain harshness as if I have done something wrong.  The people in charge here make it feel as though I am being punished for leaving the Navy, a slap in the face in return for a fulfilled four year commitment.  Should I really have expected anything different?

None of this really matters though, because in a week’s time it will all just be a confusing memory.  Despite all of my gripes and bitterness I am more anxious than anything else.  Anxious for this coming Friday (or Monday) when I will sign the piece of paper that makes me a civilian and sends me speeding back towards the place where this began.  Anxious to spend time reconnecting with the people I have missed so much.  Anxious to move on and begin to really live my life.  This chapter is closing, the last page is nearly turned and I don’t know what lies in the pages ahead, but I get the feeling that its going to be very, very good.  I have much to look forward to and, as usual, I know a song that says it much better than I ever could:

-Nina Simone

May 29, 2007 | Commentary | Leave A Comment »