A look back

Let me preface this post by saying i am not depressed, sad, or in anyway feeling different than i was yesterday or the 100 days before that here in Kosovo...i am just sharing a random thought i had..

Tonight was a look back at how things used to be...i was sitting watching the movie Rudy...that got me thinking about Friday afternoons at Buddy's house before a home game...sitting in his den watching a few motivational movies before we went out later that night to crack some skulls on the football field...i started thinking about home, as most soldiers do when they are deployed, and got to thinking how different things will be when i get home...
I wont be heading back to my dorm at U of La Verne to crush some beers with my fellow Phi Delts...i wont be sitting in class listening to a lecture...i wont even be heading back to my old stomping ground...in fact i'm not even sure what my place in this world will be ... i am at the perverbial "fork in the road"...college is done-the good times have sadly come to an end...the safety and security and identity of my former self that i wrapped myself in is now a memory, another chapter written down in the pages of what is The Life and Times of The Ben Paine. If this sounds a bit fatalistic, i appologize. i've never been good with sugar coating the truth, blunt might be a good discriptor to use.
I will eventually head back to good ol' So Cal in search of not only a job (great economy and all) but for a meaningful path to take. Friends are getting married and having kids left and right, friends and former lovers are moving on, leaving me as a distant memory...
I turned 20 in PA shortly before heading to Mississippi for deployment, 21 in Iraq, 24 in GA training, and now i will turn 25 in Kosovo...
looking back at my "plan" coming out of high school, i laugh...i mean really laugh...WTF was i thinking...things are vastly different that i thought they would be leaving high school at the tender age of 17.

i know this thought is fleating...i'll be lucky to even remember what im thinking right now in a few hours...hence me posting this...much love...miss you guys...hope all is well...
Long is the road and hard is the way...