How PCSing Changed My Life

Do you ever dread moving? Maybe it’s the anticipation for orders or wondering if where you end up next is a place you will want to be. PCSing seems to come with so many unknowns that it’s hard not to have a little bit of anxiety about what things will be like. Because, let’s face it, every PCS is pretty much a new start: A new house, a new group of friends, a new city. Or maybe they’re old hat if you’ve visited or lived there before. Although, that’s not to say that even old hat doesn’t have its own challenges sometimes.

I find myself thinking a lot about where we will end up next. I hope we can make it back to the east coast, somewhere near Washington, D.C. But, the choices are practically endless since there are so many places to go. I have come to a point where I am growing more and more impatient for my husband to get orders and for us to have some kind of plan. My impatience goes hand in hand with some anxiety and anticipation about the unknown. I already know that I will once again have to start over wherever we end up, but so far, even though it is difficult sometimes, I think that you can’t ever be completely disappointed with the new situation that life ends up putting you in. That new place that you were struggling to navigate and make friends at has suddenly become the old hat.

I never imagined myself to be this kind of person. And by that, I mean the kind of person who is itching to move on to the next: The next place, the next adventure, the next part of life. I grew up in one place, basically my whole life. When I was 8 years old, we moved to the other side of town and lived in that house for about a year before we moved back to our old house. There wasn’t much that jolted my sense of reality. Except, perhaps, when I started high school in a new school district and had to make new friends or when my grandparents moved to another city.

Things were fairly predictable.

And then college happened, and I was in this whole new place trying to figure out who I was and what life was about. I am sure there’s still a little bit of that girl gleaming inside of me somewhere. After all, when you are in a military family, you put your trust in the process, and you move to wherever your service member has been ordered to go. And you hope that you will be able to re-adapt yourself to the new environment you now find yourself to be apart of.

Though I don’t know where life will take me next, I do know one thing—I will embrace the adventure, hope for the best, and do what I can to make the most of it. Without a positive outlook, it becomes that much more difficult to cope with the situations we frequently find ourselves thrust into in the military community. When we first came to Washington, D.C., it was honestly the last place I wanted to be. I know firsthand that having a positive attitude is sometimes easier said than done, but it really is key to making the best out of whatever place your service members gets orders to.

The unknown is scary, and it’s normal to be afraid and anxious, but what I have learned is to embrace the choice I made when I said “I do”.