Goodybe, Quantico

I am sitting on the floor of our very big, very empty house, thinking how weird this particular goodbye is.  I'm sad to be leaving Quantico, but not for all the usual sentimental reasons.  I've already said my goodbyes to family and friends. We've got a few more days left in the States before heading to Japan, but we're spending them down in Richmond with Tommy's family.  He's there right now, and I'm staying here to check out of our house in the morning, and the sad part is, I really don't even care that I'm leaving.

It's not that I didn't like living here. I did. It's just that calling it living here would be a bit of a stretch.
I met some great people here, but most of my good friends here are people I knew from before. There are one or two new ones that I will keep in contact with, but for the most part, the people I know here are friends of convenience. Which doesn't mean I appreciate them any less. They played a big role in helping me survive 2009.

But 2009 has been a tough year.  I'm really ready to see it go and to ring in 2010, to hopefully move on to more positive endeavors.  Maybe it was the move and the transition from our nice "family" life in Iowa to the hell that is The Basic School.  Maybe it was the three months following TBS when Tommy was training in to California and I had to fly solo.  Maybe it was the stress of my father-in-law's battle with lukemia and subsequent passing that made it so tough.  Probably it was all these things combined.  But whatever it is or was, I never really felt like I lived here.  I felt like I was watching someone else's life go by and just trying to survive the next series of events.

To be fair, maybe living in a place for only 358 days means your roots aren't quite as deep.  Regardless, I will have to wait until another day to really live in Quantico.