nicholaskelly
I was raised on long island. It's a place i loved growing up. I never what any other place was like so I suppose i had no frame of reference. it wasn't until I joined the military that I realized that I didn't really like Long Island as much as I thought. After boot camp my first tour of duty was in Charleston, South Carolina on a cutter that tended buoys in the atlantic, caribean, and even the gulf from time to time. After six months at this unit I had alreaduy seen about 10 new places America and abroad. We went to places that not many people get to see. I stayed in cuba for 4 days. I went to haiti during a mass exodus. I went to most of the American and British virgin islands, you get the point. This was my first frame of reference of new cultures that weren't American. It was these visits that woke me up to the ways other people live and the places people live. I learned to respect the simpler ways of living simply because I saw that people looked happier than most Americans. My next tour was in california which is like another country if you grew up on long island. Californians are completely different human beings. They're wired differently. Maybe it's because the weather is so nice all year long there or maybe it's something else. I don't know. What i do know is that my three and a half years out there were some of the best of my life. People are just more laid back in general, not to mention that the waves there are almost always good. Out there I didn't see many new places with the Coast Guard but I did start to travel recreationally. I went to Costa Rica on a surf trip with my friends. That place is too easy to fall in love with. The people there are mostly friendly, the lifestyle is far less complicated, and the climate is tropical. I'm going back there in a few months and I'm sure I'll love it just as much. After Costa Rica my next trip abroad was to Italy and Greece. Both of these countries were amazing and I got to see the remains of one of the oldest cities in the world. I went all over Italy and to only one island in Greece. I don't think the Greek Islands really give you an accurate frame of reference for what life is like in Greece but it was nice to spend 5 days on a clothing optional beach. My current tour of duty has me back in Long Island. I had been for 6 years and seen a great deal more culture than most people see in a lifetime. That's probably why I hate it here now. People on Long Island are different. It may be that people now are just different. We put our dumbest and trashiest examples of American culture on TV for all of us to watch and it brings us all down and leaves its mark on everything. We are at a stage of human existence that's almost sickening to observe and experience. We could be better people than we are. We're all hypnotized by things around us and we need to wake up. I think moving back to Long Island made this crystal clear to me. Never has it been more apparent that I don't want to live my life this way and for that reason I can't feel at home living in the place I was raised.