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I wrote this blog in June of 2007:
Sunday, June 03, 2007 It has been quite a while since I wrote anything of substance, and I regret it. I am always thinking, pondering, jotting down mental notes in my head, but I rarely get on the computer and type them out anymore. That has to stop. I find that I am most happy when I am expressing myself through text and I feel most at peace when I am telling the world how right I am about everything. (That was a joke . . . kind of.)
Everyday that I am away from Iraq I realize just how different my frame of reference is . . . just how differently I see things . . . just how little those fortunate enough (or unfortunate enough . . . it depends on the day, minute, or hour) not to have been in that theatre understand what is going on in this world.
Several weeks ago I was visiting some friends in Norman whom I hadn't seen in years. After bouncing from bar to bar, friend's house to friend's house, we found ourselves at a quaint little bar in north Oklahoma City having drinks with friends of friends and posing for silly "Hey, we're getting drunk!" photos. After a few drinks and several photo ops, a friend was looking through the pictures saved to my digital camera when she came across what seemed like a random photo of the back of a humvee. I gently pointed towards the dark, billowing cloud of smoke in the background and said, as quietly as I could in a bar while still being heard, "Car bomb." It was just loud enough for another acquaintance to hear me because she piped up, "Oh, I LOVE car bombs! Are we drinking that next?" or something akin. I paused, grinned, and told her that we weren't talking about drinks. I'm sure that she replied almost instantaneously, but it seemed as if that confused look of embarassment, shock, and horror lingered on her face for hours before I heard her say in a rather nervous manner "Oh." There was probably no more than two seconds from the time I told her we weren't talking about drinks to the time her reply became audible, but it was long enough for me to contemplate just how changed I am from the time I left in December 2005 . . . just how different words' connotations are today . . . just how sheltered most of the population is . . . and just how lucky that population is in being so. But for the embarrassment on her face, it wasn't an awkward situation, and I in no way felt anger or disappointment. It was just an incredibly long realization that I came to in such a short amount of time that I felt like I was time-travelling . . . as if I had put the world on pause while I calculated what this brief exchange had meant in the grand global scheme of things . . . and had then pressed play only after re-living the day I took that picture in my head, thinking to myself how normal and routine it had seemed at the time.
It's now been two years since I met that young woman in north Oklahoma City through mutual friends. It was a year and several months after that first meeting that I met her for a second time, and, to make a long story short, that same young woman is now the love of my life. We started dating in November of 2008 off and on and did not get serious until early April. I'm happier than I've ever been and thought some people might find some humor in how we met.
Justin.
3:49 PM
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