So I have been home for about 2-3 weeks now. I know, still, I have neglected about the last month of travel updates in this blog, and well, I don't know when they'll come. There are so many more pressing issues. Like life. And I need to discuss those more than my travels. This is much more than a travel blog. If you were here to read my wonderful European adventures, you might want to stop reading now. I don't know where this will go from here, but I don't know if it will go back to Europe.
The day that I got back to the States, tragedy struck at home. A death occurred in a friend's family, and it was incredibly sad. I was stuck in airports all through the night, and didn't find out until the boy called me around midnight to tell me (I was supposed to find out way earlier, but I suck and didn't call someone back way earlier) so I couldn't call my friend to say anything at that point. I didn't know what to do. I was lost, and broken hearted for her. I tried to call her several times throughout the next few days, and eventually got to see her, and then there was the visitation and the funeral, and it was hard and it was sad, and I just wanted to do more, but I guess sometimes you just can't.
For the next week my life was dealing with what happened, trying to be there for my friends, and trying to find a job, all while adjusting to America again, and trying to catch up with friends.
Then, about a week ago, tragedy struck again. One of the boy's great friends was killed in action in Afghanistan. I had met him once, and he was truly a great guy, and it hit me really hard when he died. Since then I have had to strike this balance between dealing with it myself and keeping myself strong through the rest of this deployment, and having to be the rock for the boy. I have to keep him strong and positive and I can't let him dwell on it too much, because it's dangerous. I went to the funeral on Saturday, and aside from letting my fiance go off to war, I think it was the single hardest thing I've ever done. They spoke about his military service and that he does his job so that others can do theirs, and I lost it, because the boy says the same thing. At the cemetery the other men from his field put their badges on the casket and I lost it. I turned around, sobbing, unable to watch. The boy's family was their too. His mom tried to tell me that the boy will be home soon, and he's safe, and I guess it wasn't really the point. Because my boy may come home again soon, but this boy won't. His wife welcomed him home in a casket, not with a warm embrace. And it just broke my heart to see, first hand, the tragedies of war. I have lived a lot of hardships because of the war, but this was the first KIA funeral I had attended, and it broke me. I hope no one ever has to experience another KIA funeral. I just want this all over, and I want all of them home safe, and I don't ever want to watch someone else die too young because of war.
So now I'm here, weak and broken, and trying to keep it all together for just 3 more months until the boy is safe at home. I don't know how to do a second deployment. I don't know how to watch other friends or acquaintances die at the hands of war. I don't know how to watch other friends deal with tragedy. I don't know how to hold myself together right now. I'm trying my best, but I might be tried more now than ever before.
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