Saying Goodbye is Not Easy

One of the hardest things in joining the Navy is losing your connection to people. Since high school I had kept a small group of friends and only trusted a few when it came to me personal life and secrets. That intimate trust meant a lot to me. When I joined the Navy, I knew that our relationships would be strained because of distance and my new obligations. I never imagined that I would lose the connections almost entirely.

You really don’t notice it at first. You get out of boot camp and think you can reach out and your friendship will remain the same, but slowly it shimmers and fades. In depth conversations turn to one-word reply’s and regurgitated memes or posts off of social medias. Now that a few years have gone by, I look by and try to see why everything fell apart. Did we get too busy in our new lives? While I was working through Navy training and getting to my new ship, my friends were getting jobs and going through college. I made new friends in my training and they made new friends at their work and school. These new influences in our life gave us new interests and different perspective on life.

When I would return home, maybe once a year, the difference was very noticeable. We no longer knew what to talk about. We disagreed about some of the life choices that we had made and couldn’t understand the experiences each other had and were still going through. I realize now that I have no idea what is going on in my once closest friends’ lives. I have no idea what their interests are, their hopes and dreams. They don’t know mine. We have become complete strangers to eachother.

It may seem like the solution would be to just text and talk more. While yes, this can be the difference to keeping that friend or losing them, life gets complicated and busy. Sometimes the missed communication can not be avoided, and hence can not be fixed. This mis communication can be with calls and texts as well. As ideas about life change, arguments come. Sometimes they don't want to accept the new person you have become as they have stayed the same. My family thinks I curse too much. My friends don't get the dark humor that I have grown accustomed to hearing and saying.

This distance is not limited to friends from back home but friends that I have met in the military as well. When you get straight out of boot camp, you know no one and all of you are trying to figure out this next chapter in your life. This makes incredible bonds. Bonds that you think are going to last. Soon enough however, the military rips you apart as well. They get sent off to a different duty station, or when you meet someone at your new duty station the person you relate with leaves to their next post. You find yourself alone over and over again. You lose touch with these people too as deployment and duties restrict their time to speak to you.

This crashing tide of people coming and going in your life can be crippling which is why in my mind one of the hardest parts of being in the military. Human life is about making connections and experiences with each other. Having a support system is essential to human life. The military constantly by its own nature brings you together with people then takes you apart. After a while, you seclude yourself on purpose as to save yourself from losing more people that you have grown close to. This isolation can be dangerous but may be preferred to forming a new connection with someone you know you are going to lose.

I don't regret the changes the Navy has made to me as a person. I have become so much stronger then I was before. I speak my mind and stand up for myself in ways that I never would have before. I have become a person I am more proud of. I do regret saying goodbye to the people that were once closest to me. Not the verbal official kind of goodbye, but the faded goodbye only given by time. I'm sorry for this goodbye and I hope they will forgive me as I have forgiven them. It really is no ones fault, but it happened anyways.