The deployment is winding down, the countdown is in the single digits, my husband will soon be home for good.
And I don’t know how to feel.
I have lived for almost an entire year in anticipation of this homecoming, it is the climax of this chapter of our lives. And now that it is upon me, I feel strangely and unexpectedly lost. The past year has more or less revolved around the single moment of Zack stepping foot on German soil. It seems as though I have found my identity through his deployment. It has consumed my thoughts, my heart, my actions, my soul. Not a night passed that I did not fall asleep thinking of him, and my days were eaten up with thoughts of him. I really cannot count the tears I shed, the ire poor inanimate objects around my house have seen, or how many absurd bargains I whispered up to God at 3AM. I have sequestered my full, unbridled passion away for the last year, because I knew it couldn’t handle the heartache of such distance, such unfulfillment. The majority of things I have done and thought have been with him in mind, and for the last year my largest role has been that of an Army wife with a deployed spouse.
Now that that way of life is precipitously screeching to halt, I am like, “what now?” I imagine it is, to an extent, the way parents feel when their children leave home to make their own way in the world. You have spent so much time, energy, emotion, and thought into this one thing, and now it is gone. (Although I would be lying through my teeth if I said I was terribly heartbroken to see this part of my current life leave.)
But all of those confusing thoughts are belied by the fact that I have trouble breathing when I think of seeing his face. I have been taking Tylenol PM in the evenings, because even though I am exhausted at bedtime, I find my mind and heart racing with excitement. If I really allow myself to think about him coming home, I begin to tremble and feel as though I just spun in too many circles. Soon, so soon, the life I dreamed of will be a reality again.
My mind may be everywhere right now, but my heart is en route home.
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