Returning Home: A New Baseline

Coming home after months away, people ask when you’ll “get back to normal.” But the truth is. There probably is no “going back”. The body and mind I returned with aren’t the same as the ones that left, just like any experience that stretches you. Especially after spending months away from loved ones, thrown into a completely different culture. If you’ve ever pushed yourself through long stretches of stress, uncertainty, or repetition, you probably know what I mean.

The Illusion of “Normal”

My deployment wasn’t chaos… it was monotony. My life at home is constant motion. My fiancé calls me a hurricane, and he’s not wrong. When I left, the storm stopped. Suddenly, my days were structured, yet quiet. There were long hours, the hum of responsibility, and the low-grade pressure to stay sharp and safe.

Over time, that kind of environment reshapes you. You learn to live in constant awareness and to find purpose in stillness. When life finally slows down, peace doesn’t feel peaceful; it feels foreign. And in that quiet, new problems surface. Small things that would never matter in the chaos suddenly grow loud. It’s strange how boredom can expose the noise inside your own head and around you. Unlike at home, days passed by too slowly and I could not wait to be home.

Recalibrating At Home

I’ve been home for twenty-four hours, and it’s a strange feeling. I’ve been eating amazing food… what my nutritionist calls “Freedom Meals.” Code for cheat meals, but it sounds better. The pendulum swung from stressful stillness to excitement: so much to eat, do, and see.

My fiancé reminded me, “There’s plenty of time for that.” So for now… we rest. We recalibrate. Slowly.

Dog walks, coffee, food with my fiancé… and, of course, jiu jitsu! The challenge now is keeping my pace steady as my body and mind return to freedoms I once took for granted.

Accepting New Strength and Scars

Growth comes in more than one form. Sometimes it’s in surviving the chaos; other times it’s in enduring the quiet. Both leave marks. What matters now is integration… how I bring what I learned back home.

I’ll appreciate the simple things again: walking my dogs, driving to jiu jitsu, flying home to see my family.

I’ll carry forward that stillness—pausing to actually smell the roses.

I’ll take more time off work for trips and time with my fiancé.

Final Thoughts:

This is my new baseline. Now for the hard part: maintaining it as life tries to take over.

The question isn’t if you’ll find yours… it’s whether you’ll have the discipline to hold it when life speeds up again.

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Dr. Megan Lisset Jimenez 

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