During our time on Oahu, we have gone through 2 deployments and, to me, they were completely different. I’ve, we, essentially learned so much from each one and have taken several things from our deployments. I’ve decided to put a little list together of what stuck with me during each deployment.

1. Deployment One : emotions were at an all time high and all over the place. And I definitely cried a lot more during our first one. I think it was a mixture of things because I was living in a house with roommates and it was easy to get caught up with everyone.
2. Deployment Two : emotions were pretty tame/neutral. I was quite ok on the emotional scale this time around, I had personal stuff going on at the time, so it kind of took away from missing A so much. It was a bit of a pro because I was busy and well distracted.
3. Deployment One : wardroom support. We made a point to schedule something twice a month for all of us to hang out and catch up with everyone. We had a much bigger wardroom and half had kids and the other, didn’t. So we had a mixture of activities of planned.
4. Deployment Two : I was off island for most of deployment, but the wardroom ladies, we all kind of did our own thing. And there’s nothing wrong with that one bit. Being off island, I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t feel included in things, but I had enough going on, it was the least of my worries.
5. Deployment Homecoming One : nerves, nerves and more nerves. Maybe because it was my first one, but I could barely stomach drinking coffee, so I essentially ate nothing that morning. It seemed like such a longer event now that I think about it. However, when I first saw A, I cried my eyes out as I hugged him.
6. Deployment Homecoming Two : chill with a huge side of ‘giddy’. I was anxious + chill + extremely giddy. Since they had a later arrival time, I had some food in me and just wanted to have him back and be done with it. This homecoming seemed to go by so much faster than the last. The boat arrived, they moored, the brow was set, first hug & kiss happened (I didn’t even see it happening), CO came off, and then the guys were trickling off. It was such a hot day, I spent most of it underneath the tent, I showed A my sign once and then made it back to the shade. And not too long after that, he was coming off and were making ways off the pier. Huge bonus, no crying, all smiles.

Things We Learned From This Deployment

Since we were suppose to PCS at the end of this month, we opted to put all of our stuff into storage and I’d head home for the whole deployment. Like many things, plans changed and I returned. We’ve established that we’ll always have a home base and probably won’t do something like that again unless we absolutely had to.

Our PCS plans have changed quite a bit and we’re here on island until the end of July. We were getting a little stressed about finding a place to stay in for a few months, but it magically worked out and we’ll be staying at our old apartment! What are the odds? For the past two weeks, we’ve been staying in Airbnb rentals, which have been amazing, but we are so ready to move back into our place and to have somewhere to call home. I know, “home is where you make it”, but we’re pretty much done toting our stuff all around the island.

This definitely won’t be our last deployment since A recently signed up for another 5 years, but I’m sure we’ll learn something new from future deployments.

Did you notice in a big differences between the various deployments you’ve had? What did you take from each?

x | until next time.