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bathroom, I was on a constant state of alert in case anyone entered the bathroom with ulterior motives. Because of all of this, I was often nervous about leaving my room for any reason, or coming into the building and trying to hurry and unlock our room door. I was very uneasy about taking showers. I always felt that someone could easily get in, something proven by a local national having entered our building and attacking a female service member in the middle of the day. What made this worse was that local nationals, and whomever was supervising them, would come into the building in the early morning and their supervisor would bang on our bathroom door (which unfortunately was right next door to where I slept), and holler “housekeeping!” I do recall feeling angry and resentful, thinking it was unfair that there was nowhere on base where I could go to relax and sleep...and the racket they made when they were cleaning made it impossible to fall back asleep because there was only a single layer concrete block wall between my room and the bathroom.
On top of that, two of my roommates regularly forget to engage the deadbolt, forcing me to have to get up and lock the door before I could even try to get back to sleep. My awake nights far exceeded my sleep nights. I would remain awake for hours, and could do nothing but work at refocusing my thoughts in the room’s temporary silence within the pages of books.
When I got to my room, after removing my weapon and changing clothes, I curled up under my covers...and would press the side of my face onto the cool surface of my pillow and hug it close. Sometimes my heartbeat would slow down quickly. When I had a good day, I would drift to sleep, even if only for a short time. On bad days I’d barely sleep and would lay awake staring at the bunk above me; listening for sounds...especially the wail of rocket siren.
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