I'm so looking forward to when I live off base. I mean, it's one thing to live in a gated community and feel a little more secure.. It's another thing entirely when every time you're going home you've gotta show a military ID and have your car's barcode sticker scanned in order to get past men with combat gear on and guns in hand.

I can't cook for myself, and nomatter where I am in my room, I can look around and see my entire living area.

Every time I leave, I have to have all the cabinets/closets locked and everything hidden away. When I lived with a bazillion other girls, that was my pet peeve -- feeling like I didn't really LIVE in a place.

They don't pay me enough to live on base. In fact, I don't *get paid* to live on base..

And yes, I have a room and I'm glad for that. And if the galley food wasn't disgusting and wouldn't make me sick, I'd have three squares a day paid for, too. As it is, I'm paying for all my own food out of my pocket without the Navy's sustenance allowance. So I'm glad for how joining the Navy has provided for me, but I'm just really frustrated because I thought that after getting through bootcamp and training school, I'd finally be an adult and be able to live in my own place and make my own decisions and when I was off work, to not be in the Navy, you know? But here I am, Navy all the time because I've always gotta go home to the base and always have to show my ID to get through the gate and always have to see guns and camo and combat helmets and such just to go HOME. It isn't home at all.

As ghetto as my old apartment was, I loved how personalized I had it, and how I had set it up just perfect for me, with little detailed touches everywhere that made it mine.

I'm not even allowed to have more than two pictures on the walls (I don't even have any now because I can't resign to staying here more than another month) or much of my stuff out (i've got a couple of books, my lone sailor statue, a folding picture-frame-set, and a tiny little ceramic turtle on my nightstand. And on the room's little table, I've got my photo-collage and my stained-glass turtle lamp. My windowsill houses one of my cacti -- while the rest of my plants are at a friend's house -- and other than that, most everything is locked up or hidden away) whenever I'm gone. I sleep on top of my made-bed's comforter so that that will always look neat, and each morning I ball up my sheet and little blanket and throw those into my closet. And since I don't have a vaccuum, I go around and pick up little flecks of stuff off the floor constantly.

And I STILL get hits on my inspections!

I want to be able to sleep in on my days off without having some staff member (after I specifically asked them not to, like "today is my day off, please don't wake me up" in a note or "I'm off every Monday this month, please come by after noon" in person) come by between 7 and 8:30 every morning to see if I'm keeping the room clean enough for some hypothetical future roommate.

That future roommate can dust her own furniture when she moves in just like I did, daggonit!

Grr.

Oy!

When I got home tonight and saw that all the dusting I'd done this week didn't matter, because they'd STILL given me a hit on that, AND another hit on having soap-scum on the shower walls.. all my hatred of living in the barracks came full-force to mind. It didn't help that, since I'm off tomorrow, I had wanted to go out and do SOMETHING tonight, whatever just to get out and experience a little more of this town, but it turns out I just don't have enough single/active friends (or their phone numbers) to find something to pull me away. I've spent several days off just reading so far, and that's all well-and-good sometimes. But I've been to a grand whopping maybe 5 places outside of the base as far as restaurants or entertainment spots. The movies here are just too big and overwhelming for me to go to alone (as I often did back home at the dollar theater) and I don't know where else I can go by myself and still be safe to curb the loneliness and need to get out of my room that I'm feeling right now. This place is prooving to be harder to transition into than anywhere I've moved in the past, or at least it seems that way to me.

But I'll get through this time, I know. I enjoy most of the people I work with and the church I've been going to is full of a lot of very friendly people.

And yes, I was lonely plenty often back home where I knew a million people and was a regular at several local hang-outs. I know that it isn't just about that. But right now, I miss home and friends. And I feel so much more alone here than I imagined I would.

*sigh*