Round Two

Be gentle with me War Machine, I'm nervous

I recently raised my right hand and reenlisted, and what I had been largely excited to do, was suddenly overshadowed on the same weekend by riots in LA and bombs in the middle east. What did I expect? I don’t know, at least a little lube first.

I spent much of the years following my exit from the Marine Corps feeling as if I had unfinished business. I’d been a female in a field where deployment and combat were possibilities, and I had been hungry for both but found neither. I enlisted in 2012, as the Marines began paring down their involvement in Afghanistan. I completed my first duty station assignment at a Japanese base on the mainland, attached to a non-deployable unit. When I was assigned to Camp Pendleton in California, the chance to deploy finally appeared in the form of my eager LT peeking over the office divider and asking if I wanted to extend my contract so I would have the time for the workup and the deployment on a Marine Air-Ground Task Force. I declined. I finished out my remaining 18 months in the base emergency services battalion, first as a patrolman, and finally as the training non-commissioned officer when I became pregnant with my son. It was a fantastic unit, and I have no regrets about my service, not even about denying the MAGTF. I had an opportunity so many servicemembers are robbed of, which was to serve in a unit full of leaders who deeply cared about the Marines in their charge. Sure there were standout leaders at other points in my career, but SES Bn on Camp Pendleton in 2016 was incredible from the top down. It was an absolute pleasure to show up and work for those Marines.

When I left in 2017 I had a lot to miss. I transitioned immediately into motherhood, delivering my son in March of that year and exiting the Marine Corps while still on maternity leave six weeks later. My small family then moved to Texas and I had many starts over the next few years attempting to get back into the reserves, before ultimately putting the idea on a shelf to collect dust. I got involved with other veterans. I joined groups, I worked for a non-profit, I leaned in to the community and it connected me to so many wonderful people. But inside me the unfinished business was calcifying, like a fibroid losing blood supply, but demanding to be acknowledged anyway as it clung to me in places I did not expect.

I have sat through countless fireside conversations in the years between enlistments, and every morning after, I know without a doubt what I was meant for. It takes about a week for the doubt to roll back in with the fog of life and remind me of the difficulty in walking that road, convincing me to just put it back on the shelf for another season. Until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. There is a level of discomfort in silencing, like choking an animal, and I have accepted so many bad tastes and so much choking that I knew I must finally accept at least some of what I was meant to do in this world or I would have to live with that dead thing forever. And in true fated fashion, the universe, or whatever various versions of god, placed me 15 minutes away from an Air National Guard unit that had motivated recruiters and a generous weight allowance for a girl on a bulk.

It took five months from sending an email to the recruiter to swearing in, and an equal amount of time for me to go from “finally doing the thing” to “oh fuck”.

There is significant satisfaction in getting back in the club, and it seems almost silly to admit there was shock at the idea I might actually finish the business I thought was unfinished. But maybe it’s just that I didn’t expect us to drop bombs or deploy the national guard on an American city the same weekend I swore in. I gave my oath with the same pit you feel when you pee on a stick and that faint second line starts to darken with every passing second in a lonely bathroom

It’s been eight years and one month between enlistments. I feel unprepared. I feel out of practice. I feel brand new. I feel as if I’m staring down the barrel of another war, and I don’t know if I am as hungry for it as I was in 2012, but I know it will come regardless of the uniform I choose to wear or hang up. It will consume us like the last 20 years, it will come for our children, for our culture, for every dollar we have and then some. And the same way I fought the unfinished business, I’ll fight the idea of being one more body in the machine.