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Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Day Fifty-nine - In the flat field

 Before I got the transfer though, I had to spend almost a year at the air force base where I was stationed. As I said before, things weren't easy at all for me, at least during the first few months. A big reason for that was how young and immature I was at the time - I was still seventeen when I got to the base. And truly, at that time? I was very, very immature. It would have behooved me greatly if what I had to go through had helped me develop a thicker skin, but in truth, I was sorely lacking a certain inner fortitude to help me navigate those feelings I started to harbour. So instead on focusing on all the great things that could - and very easily, I might add - be readily available to me Iif I wanted - things like holding multiple driver licenses, having access to an easier way to go to university, learning skills that would have benefitted me in the real in the world - I just kind of withdrew, and trudged along. A form of complacency also developed, but in truth nurtured by the circumstances I now found myself in. If during my training, we had loads of daily physical exercise, during this part of my time there we barely did any. And though I rarely enjoyed lunch or dinner at the mess hall, breakfasts I enjoyed a whole of a hell lot. So much so that I'd eat a plateful of sunny side up fried eggs, that were often burnt brown and dripping with grease - and god, did I eat too many of those. So that meant that I eventually got, well, quite rotund. And though during my time at my first air base it never was a problem of any kind for me... but when the transfer came in, and I had to start anew in my new air force base, little did I know how much of an issue it would me.

It was a mistake, leaving where I'd been stationed, at a time when I was feeling fully integrated. I know that. But I made the choice to accept the transfer - because I could have declined it, mind you - because a part of me also welcomed that challlenge. I thought I could handle whatever was coming my way, but oh boy, was I wrong. And I immediately knew that something was wrong when I met my new CO -  a young Lieutenant who I sort of admired fromn a distance when I was doing my basic training, and one of the other platoons had him as an instructor. I thought then that he'd be someone who was the kind of leader one would aspire to have, but god damn, nothing could have prepared for how much of a dick he turned out to actually be. 

New people had to go through this sort of ritual where they'd have to intorduce themselves to the CO, and as I was finishing my turn, I made the fatal mistake of mentioning a health issue I was experiencing and would like to have treated. He looked at with a visceral, loathing look, and right then and there he decided he'd make the rest of my days there to be not so unpleasant ones.

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