An answer back

And Jen, you knew a good six months before you were with Carl that he was going back. You KNEW he was taking his second tour. Just be glad he's not in Afghanistan. That's where the action is.

I've been debating writing about this, for a few reasons. While I can be bullheaded and not care about the feelings of people, I don't want to irritate what is, on the best of days, a fragile friendship. And I don't understand what this was supposed to mean, when it was tossed my way. But it has stuck with me since it was said, or rather, posted, and since this journal is my cathartic release, I'm writing about it.

Yes, I knew he was leaving. If you want to get technical, and in a debate I'll get you on a technicality all the time, I knew nearly a year before he left. The awful truth of when he was leaving came down in May of 09, and on that day, I spent an afternoon numb, wondering when my world was going to right itself. The timer on my time with the Sergeant has been running out since the first time we spoke on the phone.

And it did nothing to lessen the pain, to make it any easier. If anything, my foreknowledge of his leaving played against me. Iraq became, as I've said earlier, the monster in my closet that I was terrified of when I was little. It became the physical embodiment of my worst fear, that I was losing the one person who holds my heart. Every night one was night closer to that awful day, every sunrise was one where I would stand, and watch him go where I can not follow. If the knowledge of him leaving was meant to ease my mind, I am afraid that it did the opposite.

It may be his first, second, or fourteenth tour, but a tour is still a tour. A year apart, a year where he is gone, and I am left behind. It is a year where I will have to keep myself, and my world together, where the shoulder I lean on, and the arms that protect me from the world are gone. And yes, this is his second tour. Every time his country has called on him, he has answered it. He will answer that call every time it happens, down the road. It will hurt every single time he laces up his boots one last time, picks up a gun, and leave. I have the feeling it will never get any easier, never get any less painful.

Iraq is, despite the news, still a war zone. People are still getting shot at, ieds are still exploding, there is still danger there. I had the knowledge, as I watched him walk away on that humid, hot, cursed morning, that I might never see him again. I can not be glad he's in one war zone versus another. I'd rather he not be in either. I'd rather his boots be in the middle of my floor for me to trip over, or be dealing with the particular smell that comes up from under the bed when one of his socks has been shoved under the bed, and sat there for weeks. The idea that I need to be glad that he's in one place, just as dangerous, as the other, is infuriating, and one of the biggest slaps in the face I've gotten as an Army wife. I'm not glad of anything involving deployment; I'll be glad when he is home, safe, and my world is where it is supposed to be again.

In the end, my foreknowledge, where he is, and how often he leaves, does nothing to lessen the shock of it all now. But I'm still standing, backing the Sergeant, keeping the light on till he comes home.

~Jennifer