This week is final debrief. My squad has come together one last time for this whole week to reminisce, laugh, maybe cry, process the year, and just love one another before we part ways and go back to our home states and cities. Last night we all came together or a talent or lack thereof show. By the end of the night my cheeks were so sore and cramped from laughing and smiling.
I was sitting on the back of a chair and I just looked around the room and I was caught off guard. I wasn’t expecting this realization to hit me as hard as it did: These people are my family. My squad is very large. There are 52 of us. As I looked around the room I realized their smiles, the sound of their laughter, watching their interactions with others has become so very familiar to me and the source of my comfort. They are my family. We have lived life, laughed, cried, screamed, wanted to rip each other’s hair out; we have inside jokes, quirky phrases, we have a yearful of memories. I know that I don’t know every intricate detail about all of their lives. There are some of them who I have only talked to a few times this whole year. But that doesn’t matter. It is not important. I do not need to know every intricate detail of their lives to love them. I just love them. We are family. There is not one of them that I wouldn’t go to battle for, stand up for, throw a punch for if they needed me. I can’t believe in just a few short days my new found comfort is going to change. It wasn’t until last night that I realized how odd and difficult this transition will be.
