Pure Joy, Excitement, Peace, Accomplishment, Love, Freedom, and Laughter.. These are the things that pass through not only my body but my mind when I hear these words from General Hasz, "...It's going to ring one more time, I can assure you. Because 292 is going to walk over and ring this class out of ESOAL. And you are secured." As soon as I heard those last words my eyes filled with tears of joy for not only being able to make it through four of the hardest days I've ever been through in my entire life, but also when I looked around at my company, Oregon company, I was so proud of what we did together. What we accomplished together.
Some of you might be wondering what I'm talking about. And asking what in the world ESOAL is. So I'll tell you, not everything, because if you really want to truly experience ESOAL, you need to experience for yourself and me telling you will not even begin to tell you how amazing the past week has been for me. Also if I try to explain it will just make the HA sound like a cult, which it totally is NOT. Anyways, where to begin.. We started on Wednesday night at 8:30. Well, actually we really didn't "officially" start ESOAL, That was just the warm-up stage. During the warm up stage we we stayed up all night learning how to march, exercise, and get scared out of our minds trying to figure out what we'd gotten ourselves into, that in itself lasted for 6 hours. We then were congragated to the anvil and that’s where Mr. Hasz said that ESOAL had officially started, after that he told us to go to sleep.
That simple request might sound easy, but imagine this: you have been excercising and marching for the past 6 hours. You are tired AND wet and in need of some clean clothes, but we have to sleep. Where? Let me tell you where, our company goes to the dryest spot we can find and huddle together. Girls with the girls, guys with the guys. And we fall asleep, but not of course, without the ocassional rain fall and the loud rustle of trash bags as you try to get comfortable on the concrete floor. That’s where it all began.
The next 4 days is all a blur. I remember them and what we did I just don’t know in what order we did it all. During ESOAL they don’t want the participants to know what time it is and what day or anything, so when they serve breakfast or lunch they’ll try to mix you up and say their serving dinner or something. It was raining the first 2 days of ESOAL so we couldn’t even see the sun or the sky and it all kind of melted together. This entry might be a little meshed and jumbled because this is the first time that I’ve actually thought back and really thought hard about everything that we did.
Okay, I give up. I’m not even going to try to thing about the order we did things in. I’ll just give you the basic rundown of some of the things we did. Not everything because for some reason everyone is really secretive at the HA. But anyway. We did some obstacle courses, sniper training, sleep/no sleep, marching, rolling down hills.. Oh the things that we did, what a joy it was. The whole while we were being facitlitated and being pushed and stretched. It may sound like I didn’t like it, but I really did. It was just so tiring and I was always exhausted by the end of each day and there was no relief to it becuase you couldn’t go back to your dorm room and sleep and put on pajamas. Nope, you had to go to the cold, wet football field and get into a trash bag and then your sleeping bag that’s gained about 10 pounds because it’s been absorbing all the water that’s on the ground and you’re also in your clothes that you’ve been wearing for the last 4 days.
In ESOAL there is no showers, deoterent, comfort zones, or free time. ESOAL itself is a race against the clock. When you have to go to the bathroom you better be prepared to run to the port-a-potty and be back in line in like minutes or before the next evolution happens. When you sleep don’t even think about that 6 inch bubble called your comfort space, because that doesn’t exsist when you’re trying to stay warm at night when it’s raining and is 60 degrees. And detorent and showers don’t matter because once you put on deoterent it’ll just wash off when they make you jump in the pond or do the old obstacle course or rub mud all over your body, so not o1-inch of skin is showing.
Another note to remember it’s okay to cry and throw up.. If you have to do it, don’t hold it in. Just let it out. After the 2nd meal, which was rice (i won’t even try to describe all the things that was wrong with that rice, I’ll just say that I will never eat rice or look at rice the same way EVER again) I had to roll down the hill and then I had to do it a second time, and that’s when it hit. The smells of myself and the rice and the never ending spinning down the hill, need I say more..? Yah. That meal wasn’t ever going to see my stomach again. But it’s all good.
Let me make myself very clear, you may be reading this and think this sounds easy. IT’S NOT. I’m not even going to try to kid myself into thinking that this was easy. I used to hear my sister and brother tell stories about doing obstacle courses and rolling in the mud and I used to think I want to do that. Honestly, the only reason why I would have wanted to go to the HA is to do ESOAL. But once I got here and actually did it I realize that they left out the whole lot about how hard ESOAL truly is. But that didn’t matter because I finished it and it totally changed my life, I know now that I can do anything! It still is weird to think that ESOAL is over and that I finished it and that it actually happened..
So that’s that.. It took me a really long just to finish this, don’t know why, but it just did. So now that it’s over I will move on, but never forget it EVER..!
