In 1990 I was living by myself in Stockton, California. I had been in a somewhat serious relationship - which basically means it was serious on my part, but not his - for a while, and when that ended I seemed to bounce from one relationship to another for a while. I was working as a secretary and making lousy money. I couldn't afford to pay for college classes. In fact, I couldn't afford to pay for much more than my rent, utilities and car payment. My parents were still paying my car insurance and buying the majority of my groceries. At 24-years-old I felt like I was going to be forever stuck in Stockton.
One of the brief relationships I had was with a guy named Paul who was in the Army, stationed at Fort Ord in Monterey. I visited him there a couple of times and thought his life, as well as the lives of some of his married friends, didn't seem too bad. They had nice houses on base and seemed to be enjoying their lives in the military. Not long after that relationship ended I saw an article on the front page of the Stockton Record about a local Army recruiter. On a whim, I used my lunch hour that day to stop by and talk to him. To make a long story short, he set me up with a physical and testing in Oakland a few days later, I chose a job, and three weeks later was on a plane for South Carolina to start basic training.
I don't waste time.
Eight weeks of basic training at Fort Jackson, SC and then off to Fort Sam Houston, TX for Advanced Individual Training (AIT) where I was going to be trained to work as a psychiatric specialist. After four weeks at Fort Sam we were given leave to go home for Christmas. While I was home, I went out for lunch with the guy from Stockton that I had been in the long relationship with. While I was in basic training I had written to him. Nothing romantic, just friendly letters telling him what it was like, because even though we had been in a relationship, we had also been friends. Or at least I thought so.
In the parking lot outside the restaurant after lunch, we talked a little longer. Suddenly he started acting awkward, like he was very uncomfortable. He then told me that I couldn't write to him anymore. I asked why, and he told me that his girlfriend had found the letters and was really angry. I brought up the fact that the letters had not been anything more than friendly, and that's when he dropped the bombshell.
She and I are getting married.
That hurt, but it was nothing compared to what he said next.
When I get letters from you, even though they're written as a friend, it makes me not want us to be just friends.
He was marrying her, but when he heard from me he didn't want us to be just friends. What? So I went home and cried. For hours. I was good enough for this guy to want to be more than friends with, but not good enough for him to want to marry. Suddenly every relationship I had been in felt that way - like I wasn't good enough.
I went back to Fort Sam to finish my last 12 weeks of training with a broken heart and, for the first time since high school, a serious case of insecurity. Thus started a period of my life that I am really not proud of.
About a week after I got back to Texas, a friend and I were headed out to the Enlisted Club on a Friday night to get our drink on. We arrived at the club early and didn't want to be the first ones inside, so we were sitting in the parking lot talking. I had my hand on the steering wheel but wasn't paying attention to what I was doing - I was clicking the bar that flashes the lights. A group of three guys that I had never met saw me flashing my lights and though I was flashing my lights at them (Army guys can be a bit cocky like that - it's all about them). They came over to the car window and, trying to play it off all cool, my friend and I started talking to them. We ended up hanging out with them that night and, by the end of the night, I had hooked up with one of them named Brian. He was 18-years-old. I was 24.
For the next few weeks we were quite the item, spending every chance we had together. About six weeks after we met, however, he graduated from AIT and was headed to his permanent assignment at - of all places - Fort Ord, CA. We planned to stay together and wait to see where I got stationed after I finished training and then we would figure the relationship out from there. He had even said he wanted to marry me. Just when I thought I would never find someone, here was this kid saying he wanted to marry me. I knew it was crazy, but I was so happy that someone finally thought I was worth marrying, I didn't want to question it.
A few weeks later, on the day that I was to graduate from AIT, I finally found out where my permanent assignment would be. Germany.
Germany?!
I had been told when I enlisted that there was no way I would get stationed overseas because my enlistment - at just 2 years and 34 weeks - was too short. Never believe a recruiter, that's all I have to say.
I was devastated. I called Brian, sobbing, and told him. It took a few days after graduation before I could leave Texas. Because of getting an overseas assignment, I had shots that I had to get as well as waiting for a port call from the transportation folks. By the time I was finally cleared to leave, Brian had talked to his commander about the situation. His commander, a young captain, said that he could get my orders changed to Fort Ord if Brian and I got married. We had been dating for 2.5 months at the time, and only six of those weeks had actually been spent together in the same place. But we thought we were going to last forever, so we decided to do it - we were going to get married so that the good captain could get my orders changed.
I drove from Texas to California, picked Brian up in Monterey, hooked up with my parents and brother in Tracy, my hometown, and drove to Lake Tahoe and got married. Just like that. It was craziness, and I knew it. In fact, the day after we got married, as we were driving back to Monterey, I felt sick. I knew that what we had just done was insane, but I was still determined to make it work.
When we got to Monterey, I had to leave Brian at Ford Ord and head back to my parents' house because he lived in the barracks and we couldn't afford a hotel until his commander got my orders changed. I had ten days until I was due to leave for Germany.
I don't remember how long it took the commander to give Brian this information, but he told him that he had contacted the assignment folks in the Army and had been told that they could have got my orders changed if we had gotten married before my orders for Germany were cut. But since I already had those orders, I would still have to go to Germany and, in two years, they could get Brian and I orders to the same place.
Two. Years.
Long distance relationships are hard enough when the relationship has a good foundation. With six weeks of actual "together" time and six weeks of talking on the phone every day, they're impossible. So, ten days after saying "I Do" with a guy I barely knew, I was on a plane for Germany with nothing more than a $99 ring on my finger and a few pictures to remind me what he looked like.
So much for joining the Army and fixing my life, right?
To be continued . . .
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