Coming back to America.

When you deploy, the first three months you spend learning your job.
The last month you spend trying to not think about home, about getting extended, about getting hurt or killed.
I spent 2009 in Afghanistan.
I spent four months of 2010 in Afghanistan.
I’ve spent all of 2011 so far in Afghanistan.
In the last twenty nine months, I have spent twenty one of them in Afghanistan.
If I had deployed thirteen days earlier,
I would have been in Afghanistan for 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.
So, I’m coming “home” for leave.
Two weeks of R&R. Rest and Recreation.
Civilians probably think we have some stupid name for it, like “Rest and Reproduction”.
No, we don’t joke about it. We joke about death. We joke about being hurt. We joke about being captured, and having our heads cut off, we joke about prosthetics.
We just call it “Leave”.
I’ll come “back” to America for two weeks.
“Back”.
I don’t know America any more. I don’t know how to be there. Is there stuff I want to do, are there places I want to see?
I have no idea.
What am I supposed to do for two weeks?
And I am haunted by the knowledge that Leave is a reflection of being deployed back to the States, and that is a reflection of being a civilian.
What the fuck would I do as a civilian?
How would I find a job? What would I be qualified as? What would happen when I lose that job?
Coming back to America is too much like dying.
Here, I have a job, a task, a purpose. Here I am valuable.
There, what am I?
Useless.
Unemployed.
Without purpose.
How do I go “home”?
What would the point even be?
Will she like me?
Will she like the changes that have happened to me?
The callouses, the cuts, the bruises, the fact that I shave my head every morning? The muscles, the fat, the wrinkles and lines, the differences in my body, my mind, my soul?
Will she still like me?
Will the children want me around? Will I be patient enough? Will I be a good father? Will they remember me? When will they judge me? Will they forgive me?
The mind attempts to grab on to things to focus on. A present! If I could find the right present, _that_ would make things better! A stuffed animal, or a scarf, something beautiful, or silly, or strange, or endearing. The item, ultimately empty. Meaningless, except to keep the mind anchored, keep it from drifting into shallow waters of fruitless worry and stress.
Never think about the possibilities. Do they love you? Do they still need you? Have you been replaced? Is there any meaning to the sacrifices you have made? Will they be there for you, or will you come home to an empty airport, and empty ceremony, and empty home?
And if they are there this time, what about next time? And the next time?
It’s like jumping. Leaping. In the dark. And you cannot see the other side, and you don’t know if there even _is_ another side.
You just jump.
And hope.
And again.
And again.
Tonight is my last night at work.
Getting ready for that plane flight. Getting ready for that ticket home.
Getting ready to jump.
In the dark.
Again.