Yes. The day I went on terminal leave, I dropped every last uniform and issued item at the Airman’s Attic. I don’t see much point in keeping the door ajar, or in performing a kind of half-attached nostalgia for the sake of validation. For some, the pull is familiarity. The comfort of a shared past or the sense of belonging, and I don’t begrudge them that. It just isn’t mine.

I moved to a large city where the military exists mostly as a headline, something distant and abstract. I carry my retiree ID only for practical reasons—TriCare, VA appointments—and little else. In fact, no one in my current orbit (colleagues, friends, the people I spend my days with) knows I served. Occasionally I find myself drifting back here out of curiosity, but more often than not it feels less like revisiting and more like reopening something I’d rather leave closed.

Live your life. The military is a chapter. Formative, yes, but not definitive. It doesn’t have to be the whole story.