My story so far

"I still have moments where I fall back into that door in my mind".

Thought vomit #1

"If I wrote down some thoughts, would anyone give a shit to read it? Would they read half and get bored? What if they think I suck?" I feel like thats an understandable reservation. It's taken me some difficult personal growth to admit that I need a certain level of validation. So far my greatest success has been with shock value. Ive developed some great online relationships through memes about anal sex and the hilarity of gender inequalities. There probably won't be much shock value in this piece, just me establishing a foundation of my writing style. But hopefully its bearable to an audience. Kind of wish I was using emojis.

 I don't have a story of self discovery, I am IN a story of self discovery. My name is Monica Long, I am about to turn 30,  I live in Florida. As fucked up as it is, I feel like those are the only things I can attach to my identity right now. Im not going to regurgitate my life story in chronological order, my mindset is much more choppy shit show at the moment. For the past two and a half years Ive worked in an office doing day to day accounting and HR functions for a small company. In 2018 I went through a divorce and lost my dog of ten years as well as my grandmother. This is normal, these things happen to people. My mindset after closing these chapters of my life are what I want to write about today.

 Have you ever found yourself acting out and not really knowing why? At some point I had to come to terms with the reality that I wasn't doing what I wanted to be doing. I didn't even know what I wanted to do, I just knew what I didn't want to do. I didn't want to be in that office anymore, I didn't want to be complacent anymore. So I left my apartment, left my job, I currently live on a rather large property in a rural area, just trying to figure out what the fuck I want to do. But I'm committed to finding it.

 At the end of 2018 I made the decision that I wanted to join the Army. That December I went to an anime convention that a friend from my CrossFit gym was potentially investing in, so we met there to check it out. There were uniformed men walking all through the hotel, I actually couldn't tell if they were in costume for the convention or the real deal. Turns out they were all there for a recruiting training event. At one point I was sitting outside of an elevator when I saw one of them on an iPad. I'd like to paint you a picture of  a champagne drunk blonde girl wearing a crotchless body fishnet, essentially dressed as a slutty Mrs. Claus, approaching what turned out to be Col. Mark Olin claiming that she wanted to join the Army. He chuckled, but engaged me in conversation. That is where I met my recruiter, and that is when I began what I believed to be the next step to the rest of my life.

 So fast forward almost a year later, here I am the almost 30 year old floridian trying to get together an officer packet, living in the middle of nowhere, surviving off of Chipotle and brownie moose tracks. I have no success story to tell, I have no advice to give, in fact I am the one who needs advice. I mean unless you want to learn how to eat like shit and still meet your macros… or where to find the freak nastiest memes. I guess I am good at some things. But I am in the process of shedding the skin of an old life, and hopefully a better being will come out of this. Or it won't, but I'll make sure my stories are at least funny on the journey.

-Monica