Kate&I: Aug 2005, TQ Iraq

I came across this in my journal and got a good laugh out of it.  As an afterthought to my 26 September 2005 regular daily entry, I wrote:

P.S.  WOMEN AT WAR
   1.       Apparently women get “Dear John’ed” while away at war, too. 
       à All is equal in love and war…especially the painful stuff
   2.       My girlfriends are making history.
         a.       Kate – training Iraqis in Bagdhad
         b.      Theresa – leading convoys and working with 3rd Recon Bn
                             c.       Me – the only female officer in my entire unit deployed
   3.       We are strong…we are strong
    I’d just been dumped (see #1) by my sometimes-on-sometimes-off boyfriend (with whom I was madly in love at the time) exactly one month into my first deployment to Iraq.  I was 24.  I was naïve.  That picture to the left is of me putting all of his letters, our emails, pictures, etc into the burn barrel at our barracks.  I laughed about it, making the most of a situation where you’re crumbling on the inside but you have to smile and move on on the outside.  I was just starting to make sense of how things might be while I was in Iraq, looking to friends in other units (Kate and Theresa) for support and normalcy, and just taking it all in.   
This seemed like a funny little snapshot of where I was at that time.  Fellow female Vets, does this make you smile or laugh at all??? J  Can you relate?? 🙂