This is the rough draft and I am currently looking for my final draft, I probably deleted it after reading it once since I never thought I would put this out there for everybody.
Note: Sorry for the grammatical errors, I never really planned on this being my final piece.
Well, let me just start off by saying this is a subject that I have neglected for six and a half years. I had pushed it into the deepest parts of my brain for all this time, yet now I feel that I need to talk about this subject otherwise I really do not know how I would react if something did happen. To start off though I think you should have a little introduction into my life and my family. I was nine years old when we moved into what the United States Military classified as a dangerous place. The place just happened to be my favorite place to live. The place is called Bahrain and is situated within the Persian Gulf, and is about a twelve mile drive to Saudi Arabia, that is if you go over the Causeway. It was used as the staging area for the American military during the first Gulf War when Saddam Hussein entered Kuwait. We moved there for my dad's work. He just so happens to be in one of the most dangerous lines of the military, Explosive Ordnance Disposal or E.O.D for short. They are the people who go in and clear mines, and disarm any other explosive weapons that could be there, including nuclear weapons. These guys have some of the fewest soldiers spread throughout all four branches of the service, and they have one of the highest casualty rates because of this.
So to continue this story my family was sent to Bahrain because of the military and because of this my life has changed drastically. We lived over there during the heating up period of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2003 to 2004. During this time I really did not understand the whole thing being a kid and all, all I really knew was that some people did not enjoy the way that the United States wanted the world to be run, through peace and democracy of course. Living in this area opened up my eyes to many different cultures and way of life, and I consider it a truly life changing experience. I was just like any normal kid over there. I went to school, granted with armed guards patrolling the campus and multiple cameras watching over every class room. I rode the bus to and from school, granted with an armed guard on it, and we were only allowed on after dogs and EOD personnel searched the buses each and every day, before and after school. I lived in a house, maybe it had its quirks but I truly called the place home. I loved each and every minute that I lived there and I would go back without any hesitation.
Fast forward one year later and the wars are starting to heat up. People questioned whether it was a safe place for families, however they never questioned this for the service members. They felt that they could handle themselves, of course they were right. After a few days of deliberation though nothing really happened with it and we continued to go about our daily lives. Fast forward to the beginning of the summer of 2004 and everyone's beliefs changed. Why you may ask. A bomb went off on one of the twenty six square miles of the island of Bahrain. It went off, and I use that term loosely, because all it managed to do was dent someone's gray garage door, right next to the military base and next to an apartment complex that I used to live in about four months prior. People were up in arms over the entire thing and again it is questioned whether this is a safe place to raise a family. This caused another vote to happen, the vote was to see if we should send Military dependents back to the States because many people now considered Bahrain an unsafe place to live.
The vote passed unanimously.
Families were forced to leave their loved ones behind for the remainder of their tour. My dad had one year left on his tour. We were given three weeks to prepare to evacuate the country and the military said they would fly us to any destination that they deemed safe. My mom, brother, and I decided to go to Texas. Why Texas? Because my entire mom's side of the family lived there except for one of her brothers who was deployed in Iraq at the time, but he would return weeks after we arrived. Mom and dad told my brother and I what we were allowed to bring, one suitcase and one carry on. Three weeks later we were on the plane flying to the States. But before my mom and brother boarded the plane my dad pulled them aside and said something along the lines of “If anything happens take care of each other”. What I did not know then, but what I now know five and a half years later is that this was the major point of change in my life. He stayed there without anyone from his family, alone fighting a war that most people did not agree with.
So we all went to Texas and lived there for a year, the seemingly happy family, if you looked in from the outside. However, if you were actually there in the room you would have found a family divided. We all split up. My mom stayed in the living room/dining room, my brother confined himself to his room, and I confined myself to my room. They tried to desperately get away from the situation that was at hand, and I stayed out of their hair because I really was sort of oblivious to the war at that time. During this year away, my dad came to visit once. It actually happened right at the beginning of us living in Texas, he stayed for a week, and during this week we were just like any regular family. The week quickly passed and right as we dropped him off at the airport he said these words “Take care of each other if anything happens”. And it was at that moment feelings, too many to name came over me. I wasn't an oblivious little kid any more, I now understood why we were forced to get out, and why he was forced to stay. It was at that moment that I recognized the danger of his situation.
I felt fear. Fear of the unknown really. I was afraid of what my mind could conjure up and to be truthful these fears were justified. Every night I laid in bed and became deep in thoughts. Thoughts that quickly turned into terrible, terrible dreams, and these dreams happened to become almost all too real to me. News headlines flashed across the bottom of my vision, never seeming to go away. I was on CNN however it only covered one thing, the war. Breaking news flooded the screen each day “Another soldier killed” , “Base attacked”, “Roadside Bomb claims the lives of seventeen” , “The war has no end in sight”. These headlines propelled my fears, and forced my mind to wander. I wondered whether my dad was still alive, or if he had been killed. Seeing the state of my family though I suppressed these fears. I locked them in the deepest parts of my brain and never let them out of my head.
Not having him there with us really changed the family. To this day we still have not become as unified as we once were. Now instead of everyone being in separate rooms, it is me and my brother in one room, while my mom and dad are in another. The only time we all ever interact is if we go to see a movie, or eat dinner. It's a sad sad thing, that this war affected our lives so much. And to be frank I really do not believe that we will ever truly become a happy family once again. He leaves again in August to go work in a different area, leaving my mom and I here. He does not want to be alone, but he knows how much it would mean for me to be able to finish high school off in the same place. I can truly say I love him for this. He puts us on pedestals above himself and really gives us everything. When he leaves though I know he is going to repeat the same words he has always said “Take care of each other if anything happens”. I know that thoughts will begin to form in my mind. Thoughts of the unknowns, of the what if's, of the hypothetical situations. I still have the fear of losing him in a combat situation and not knowing it. But I can also still say I love him.
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