Requesting permission to come aboard. DEP Recruit Bautista and her time in between high school and boot camp.

A conversation with my boyfriend-type-thing many weeks ago:

Me: Is it normal that I can’t really… remember much from just a few years ago? Like my memories from even before boot camp are kind of blurry.
Him: Nah, that’s not weird.
Me: Huh. Okay.
Him: Wait… how many traumatic head injuries have you had?
Me: …none.
Him: Yeah, that’s probably not normal.

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It’s not that I can’t remember. It’s that I just need help remembering.
Ever since I started my “journey of self-discovery”, I’ve just been lost in this whirlpool of thoughts. So many things happening to me at one time internally and externally. I’ve learned to deal with change better than I have in the past. I realized that if I am indeed going to stay in the Navy for the full twenty then I’m gonna have to get used to “accelerating my life”.

But since there’s been so much change in so little time I haven’t been able to build lasting memories. When I was going through “A” school and failed my first test I realized something about myself; it takes me a really long time to learn something. But once I know it, I know it forever.

Now that I’m in Norfolk, basically on hold until I leave to go meet my ship, I’m alone with my thoughts and my memories. And the internet. The internet has been such a big part of my life that you can trace my life through my internet footprints. I’ve left a digital trail of where I’ve been and where I hope to go.

More importantly, I think, I’ve left my accounts of what I’ve been through. Things that for some reason I can’t remember very well but I should. I guess the best example is why my relationship with Ryan ended. There were so many details that I wouldn’t have remembered if it wasn’t for the fact that I blogged so ridiculously about everything back then.

And it all works in my favor. Because right now, while I’m trying to figure out what I want from life in general, reading about who I was back then helps me realize who I want to be.

When I went through boot camp I swore I wouldn’t lose my individuality and I didn’t think that I did. The truth is, I think it nearly left me a blank slate. I, being the people pleaser that I am, emulate the people that I am around. I noticed that while I was in “A” school I was slightly different whenever I got a new roommate.
At the core, I’m still me. But I’m “like a phone with different faceplates” (as I described it to my boyfriend).

It’s just now that I’m starting to get back to who I was. I logged onto Gaia for the first time in a really long time last week and while I hate what that website’s turned into, I remembered what I liked to do in my free time. I liked to type ridiculously long posts and blogs. I logged onto brassgoggles and read some of my past posts and it doesn’t even sound like I wrote it. (Though, keep in mind, I was purposely trying to create a different persona for that forum.)

I was exploring my base last week and I found the hobby shop and I was -really- happy to be in there. As an engineer in “A” school I didn’t lose my love of tools or building things but that love was dulled because we didn’t do very much hands on work while I was in BECC.
ATT was when I really started to remember the things I liked to do as a “civilian”. Wires, soldering irons, resistors… LED lights?! Yeah. Brought back memories.

Ever since then I guess I’ve been rediscovering my “geekieness”.

So anyway. ATT got the ball rolling. Now that I only have one roommate who usually isn’t in the room (and when she is, she’s playing WoW xD) I’ve had time to think.

And mostly all I’ve remembered so far is how much I love my think time.

(Random note: It wasn’t ATT itself. The time that I was in that school was an odd point in my life. That was when all my friends started leaving Great Lakes and I was still there. It was depressing but in an odd way character-building.)

Wow, I need to blog more. (I do one sentence blogs from my phone every now and then but it isn’t enough.)