A year ago tonight, I was desperately packing and repacking my bags to take with me on my flight to the desert. I was also still unaware that the boots I’d been issued that day didn’t fit me and would cause serious trouble for me on the way over, and hadn’t quite made peace with the fact that I’d be leaving a hamperful of dirty clothes sitting in my closet waiting for my return. It’s been an entire year since I set out on my deployment. I’m shocked by the fact that it’s been so long.
What’s so interesting is that the time in Baghdad (and Qatar, on the way) seemed to take forever. It was, somehow, an infinitesimal eternity. Eternal in that every day, every week, seemed to stretch out before you as something that would never end. Infinitesimal in that once it was over, you were shocked that three weeks had just gone by. Eternal in that you couldn’t even remember what it was like to be the person you were when you arrived. Infinitesimal in that when you returned to work, everyone treated it as though it had been a normal (if slightly longer than usual) business trip.
But the six months since I got back? Nothing! A blip in time. I have not changed significantly in any way since arriving home, and my life is virtually indistinguishable from how it was back then (although my apartment is cleaner and better-decorated). My coworker, who followed me to Baghdad a month or so after I got back, has already returned home, taken his post-deployment leave, and come back to work. (We had a great conversation about places and events in common, to the exclusion of everyone else who hadn’t been there.)
It’s so strange how malleable our experience of time can be–and how epochs in a person’s life can make six months seem like years have gone by.
Posted by Kjirstin 
