September 13th, 2016 was the day that would change my life forever. My mom woke me up, made my favorite breakfast for me, and took me to the recruiting station. She pulls up to the van with my recruiter and a few other sad-looking kids sitting in the parking lot waiting for me. I hug my mom goodbye and tell her I will see her tomorrow before I ship out. I get into the van with the rest of the people getting ready to change their lives forever, and we are off to the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) just an hour north. As we are getting on the interstate, I take one last glance at my hometown and take it all in because it was going to be a long time before I was to see this beautiful place again. The ride to MEPS got gradually better because our recruiter was trying to make it fun for us; he was answering the questions we had and telling us all it was going to be fine. Once arriving, they check us into our hotel and we all go to sleep, knowing that we will probably not be getting much good sleep for a long time.
5:00 am September 14th I wake up and we are greeted by a Captain in the Air Force who separates us into the branches we are joining. It was a long day full of finishing our final paperwork, physical screening, and a whole lot of waiting. Hours later it was finally time for our final swear in before shipping off. We go into a room next to the swear in room, and a service member explains to us what we are going to do. He said, "Walk in using facing movements, once you get into your position raise your right hand and repeat what we say” and I thought "okay, that’s too easy." He then says the words “Alright file in” and everything in my body goes numb. I felt like I was in one of those movies where the actor can’t hear anything, but people are still talking around him. We file into the room with a huge American flag followed by every state's flag hanging behind us. We swear our oath and we exit the room. I glan...