Going Home

So I am about two weeks out from going home. With all the things I have to be scared of right now (jumping out of planes, moving across the country, going to war, etc. etc. etc.) somehow returning home is the most frightening of all.

I remember my battle buddy going through this, and remember all the things I said to her, but for whatever reason, I cant seem to take my own advise.

Like her, I guess Im worried that there isnt a place for me in that world anymore. I look at things so differently now. The Army along with it's lifestyle has engulfed my reality, and Im just not sure how to blend the old civilian me and the new Army me together. What if I go home and I dont know how to relate to my husband, I forgot how to touch him, how to be his wife. What if its been too long, or we find that there is no commonality? What if everything changed? Whats worse, what if my kids dont remember me, or they got so comfortable without me that they dont need me anymore? I love that my family has learned to survive without me there, but what happens when Im tossed back into the mix? Will I fit? Or maybe I wont know what to do with them. Being a mother, while I dont claim to be great at it, has been pretty instinctive for me. I figure women have been raising children for centuries and we are wired to know what to do. So why am I so scared that somewhere in the last 7 months, I forgot? Sometimes I talk to them on the phone and I cant believe that Im responsible for these little people, that they are depending on me. Im just a girl, trying to fit into all my roles as a wife and mother and soldier etc. and I keep looking around wondering how this happened, who am I kidding? I feel like Im playing at some pretend life, like Im still 6 with my barbie dolls prancing around in an imaginary world... and at the end of the day Ill pack everyone up in a box, go curl up in my little girl bed, and hang on to my stuffed polar bear. The one I used to wrap around my neck because I was afraid vampires would come get me. Yeah, and Im supposed to be a hero for my country, the supplement to my husband, and the comfort of my children. Oh God.

Then theres this deployment issue. What if I go back home, settle back in to my family and my life, and discover that I cant leave again. The first month that I was gone I was nauseous every time I thought about them. I learned to push it out of my mind and focus, I learned to move forward despite the hollowness. But what if I cant do it again? If nothing else, Ive learned that time is expensive, and missed time even more so. I have a horrible gut-wrenching struggle with whether or not this is abandonment. In a sense, it doesnt matter why I am gone, it doesnt matter how important whatever reason is... Im still not there for my children. And Im going to do it for a whole year. A year. When I come home my son will be in kindergarten. I will miss his first day of school. I will miss his 6th birthday and my daughter's 4th. Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Independance Day, the first lost tooth maybe, learning to read, tying shoes, school shopping, sports, play-dates, parties, swimming, food fights and fist fights and water-gun fights, temper tantrums and nightmares, and the cuddles that follow. All the smiles and all the tears for a whole year. I cant gather enough of those in the 5 short months I will get with them to last a year. And then there's the deep, unspoken question that everyone is afraid to talk about... what if I dont make it home at all after that year? Then this will be my last time to "go home" and Im so scared I will mess it up somehow. I want to make them all happy, I want to dote on them and love on them. But what if I cant remember how?

On top of all of that, Im terrified to go home because I cant say goodbye to some of the people there. I cant do it. How am I supposed to tell the people I cherish most that I may never see them again? How am I supposed to tell the people that I want in my daily life, that I want to see every day for the rest of my life, that we may have to settle on once a year or once every couple of years? I cant.

So give me parachutes and grenades, air raids and mortars, rucks and field exercises with no toilet paper and freezing hooches, military customs, terrorists, cordons, hand-to-hand combat, war.... I can handle that. Yet I dont know how to meet my family again, and I dont think I can say goodbye. Why did everyone prepare me for the ways of war and fail to teach the hardship of home?

Im sorry Sir, I havent been briefed on this yet...