These Daze

Work is picking up.
My second Soldier of 3 has arrived, though she is still in-processing.
My first Soldier is kind of stuck in gridlock around here, as there's a lot I must do, and very little she can do to help me.
I no longer have an NCOIC (immediate supervisor/boss of my area, for my civilian friends) and no credentialed officer to speak of. I am running the show, with some very able, if somewhat peripheral, leaders to help me when I need them to.
Tomorrow, I brief the battalion executive officer- second in command of several hundred people and a pretty important guy by comparison to me, to clarify- which is pretty serious stuff. Somehow, I have found the confidence to tell someone who outranks me, knows more than me, and would probably do a better job than me in this brief that I will handle it. I favored risking falling flat on my face in front of a very important person, and an officer who has been part of that peripheral leadership in order to learn and stand on my own two feet.  I genuinely believe I'll pull this off and do so smoothly, though. Where this confidence comes from, I can't explain.
I am learning, quickly, that this whole Army thing is just something that comes naturally to me, once I let go of my habit of over-thinking things and panicking. In the words I used to explain why I made this decision to my Soldier earlier: "My success is ultimately nobody else's responsibility but my own. I'll either own it or I'll eat it." I was pretty impressed with this stroke of rational and deliberate thinking, as a year or two ago, it was not something I was exactly known for. I am, by nature, an emotional woman. It's taken me til age 25 to get a decent grasp on how much I show the world of what's going on in my mind and heart. To say I wear my heart on my sleeve is a bit of an under-representation. Perhaps, this is why I am sitting here trying to wrap my head around what has been going on in my life these last few days.
Saturday night, I get a phone call from Doc. Yes, the same Doc. He has a friend he wants me to meet. We haven't been on bad terms, but I'd be lying if I said I expected him to call me out of the blue, never mind expected him to try to hook me up with his friend. Well, at this point, I was pretty content with the thought of being single and trying to work my way through the grief of Danger's death- I had finally accepted I wasn't over it. Doc setting me up with someone, though- this I had to see. The picture he sent me of the guy didn't pique my interest- he looked like a skinny, balding redneck. Well, I went anyway, if only for a night out and to squash my curiosity. As it turns out, he is a skinny, balding redneck. He is also intelligent, likes to read, the father of two daughters, a gentleman and terribly sweet. He's tough, goofy, and has more in common with me than I am entirely sure I'm comfortable with, to include some of our mothers' issues.
We have known each other all of four days, and my emotions are open, raw and very visible. The odd thing is, they haven't turned as thick or overwhelming or negative as I expected to. I'm not entirely positive if it's that he's so much like me he reacts the way I want him to, if I've learned that much about how to handle myself, if it's the fact that I know in my heart Danger would approve of how he treats me or a combination, but I have been able to open up to him without fear. I don't flinch when he touches me, I don't pull away when he kisses me, and I don't "warn" him about my emotions. He's patient, sweet and incredibly loving. He's also incredibly loyal. He doesn't get frustrated when he has to tell me he's not going anywhere, and he seems to enjoy reminding me spontaneously.
Why am I not scared to believe I love this man after only four days?

Dumbness

I'm tired of being single, and even more tired of having no clue why crap just doesn't work out with most of my friends, never mind relationships. I know some of the most 2-faced people and, apparently, some of the most unwilling to discuss things, too.
I'm miserable today. This probably won't be one of my more intellectual posts for that fact.
I had a dentist appointment at 7:30 this morning, which is a miserable way to start off a day. I feel beat down, sore, tired, cranky, etc. I just want to be at home in bed, cuddled up with someone who cares about me. The two people in this world (still living) that I genuinely believe care about me are too far away, and I'm as of yet unconvinced that I will ever again be happy in a relationship. It's just getting to the point where lonely is normal, where I've stopped hoping that cute guy staring at me across the restaraunt for three hours will come say hi, because they never do, and where laying in bed at night, crying, I've finally learned that nobody wants to be there with me while I'm going through this. It's a negative way to look at it, I know, but maybe my career is all I should focus on. That's all that I've got going for me right now, and I'm about ready to give up on anything else. Valentine's Day is, what, Monday? I know there will be no flowers or chocolates waiting for me, I know I'll be alone, and I guess that's just the way it'll always be. Someday, I may even be able to fully accept that, rather than having this little voice in the back of my head saying 'Maybe someday....'

Trouble, Thy Name Is Mine

So, I can't count the number of times I have been told that my seeing the best in people is/does/will always get me in trouble.
Maybe the people who say that are even right- sometimes.
Maybe I just would rather ignore that fact, and continue being optimistic and refusing to believe that a lot of people are capable of and/or willing to hurt me.
It's not that I haven't been hurt, and it's not that I'm not wary of being hurt again. It's that I've been hurt often enough and badly enough that I refuse- I frikking REFUSE- to let my life revolve around that.
So, today I opened up a door to someone who most people would quickly consider "off-limits" a little wider than it already had been. He's not married, and not in the Army, and I'll just leave it at that.
We'll call him Trouble.
In any case, Trouble n I are looking at a long-distance thing for a while, so we'll see how it goes, but he's intelligent, tattooed, sweet and is doing all he can to be there for me. I haven't made him any promises, but I told him I'll try to come see him when I'm able to. I really do like him, but this is the type of situation that everybody else will tell me I've lost my marbles for. I don't care, though.
I just want to be happy, and I'm not one of those people who can do ANYTHING the normal way, so, hell with it, I'm going to do it my way, and I'm gonna have fun.