She walked quietly, her head held high. She tried her best to look confident, to look secure in the fact that she was walking alone. She tried to smile at the man that held the door for her, the child that seemed to blindly be babbling in her direction, and the older couple that she seemed to pass four different times in her trip around the area.
Her smiles, however, were only for show. If they looked closer, anyone would have seen the distant look in her eyes, the way her smile never was quite as bright as it could be, or the way the sides of her mouth never seemed to turn upward like they should. Her mind wasn't present where she was. Instead, it was miles away in place she had never seen, a city she hadn't even heard of... until two weeks ago.
Her heart had been ripped away from her and sent to a foreign country to fight a war that she wasn't even sure had a significant reason anymore. Her life was taken away, only to be seen in glimpses of poorly pixilated images on a computer, or short spurs of conversation on a terrible phone line that called for more dropped calls and redials than real conversation.
She slept alone at night, still cold under the layers of thermal coverings. She longed for the steady breathing of the man that used to lay beside her, for the warmth he radiated, and the comfort he provided. She missed being cramped on the once too small bed and was only now realizing that her small frame made her bed seem that much more empty, causing her to feel that much more alone. In many ways, the things that once made her uncomfortable, were the things that now were causing her to lose more sleep than they had before.
Her days had begun to run together. She hardly distinguished day from night at this point, nor one day of the week from another. She knew there were too many days left to start any form of countdown and just prayed that her days would quickly melt away to the day he returned.
She watched as her normally fun-loving pup sat by the front door whining for an entire week waiting for his savior-turned-father to return. She watched as he quickly lost hope and retreated to becoming her only form of comfort during the long lonely days. She watched as he roamed the house, pausing to smell a piece of clothing, or just the air, as if he caught the scent of the man who normally spent his evenings rolling around the floor with him.
She walks quietly, with her head held high, because it's all she can do. She tries to stay strong, for his sake. She waits daily to remind him how much she loves him, how much she misses him, and how often she thinks of him.
She is living through her first deployment with the man that stole her heart and took it with him to Iraq.
I love you, Matthew. I can't wait to see you in Hawaii for R&R, and for you to come home a while after that. You are everything to me and I want you to remember that everyday that you are away from me. I'll be here waiting for you.
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