When I opened my door, I was met with 3 things: Blinding light, loud noises, and terrible smells.
"How long has it been since I've set foot outside…?" I wonder to myself as I hop down my steps.
After my eyes adjusted to the light, I set off down my road.
"Ahh, why did I move here. I never liked the city much."
School was a 30-minute jog from home, so I set off at a steady 7km/h (4.3 mph) while cursing my current home. My parents and I lived in their country home when I was younger. I spent most of my childhood crawling through the fields hunting for bugs or adventuring in the woods to look for animals. My dad and mom bought the land when they came back from their deployment. My father told me that he preferred to stay away from people when he wasn't deployed, and my mother preferred the quiet nature to the concrete jungle and its smells.
When my father enlisted in the army at the age of 18, he knew that he wasn't fit for university, so he decided to fight on the frontlines to protect those that were. I was told that he was wounded quite heavily in his first firefight and spent a month recouping. He always claimed that that was what influenced his loner behaviour. In the second half of his recuperation, he met a female doctor that was assigned his case. It was love at first sight for both of them and that's how he came to know my mother. Most of their discussions were about which nature trails they conquered or about complaining about the city life. That's why that when my dad was finally healed and discharged after 3 years of combat, he and my mother bought the land. When I was born, they were overjoyed and had a huge celebration with their military friends. They told me the whole mountain was filled with people and even jets were present doing "training exercises" They also told me that they were scolded quite heavily when their superiors eventually found out about the party. They were not scolded too heavily because they were both important in the military. My mother worked up to the top logistics officer in the medical field for the army. . My Father was a commanding officer in the Imperial Army and he said he did other things as well. (possible SOF?? Cool, Dad). To make up for wasting military assets, they were forced to deploy 2 more times for 5 years when I hit the age of 5.
I spent most of my childhood just having fun with my parents traveling around the homestead or getting taken into the town to watch movies or shop around for cool new toys. When it was time to enter kindergarten, I knew I had to say goodbye to my parents, and It was quite the tearful goodbye. I remember waving them off at the airbase and grabbing the hand of Emily, my caretaker they left me with. Goodbyes are sad, but I knew that I would see them again. My mother would be safe in the base while my dad was too stubborn to die, so my worries were low. Of course, I was five at the time and I didn't know that the war was starting to ramp up again. Little did I know that I would not be able to see them ever again.
"Ahh… I told myself I wouldn't think of the past."
"Okay, punishment time. Next 2 kilometers is going to be a full sprint."
I take off going as fast as I can run, leaving behind dust and my past.