It was a learning year for us, last year. Painful and slow at times, the words from those occasions echoing over and over in my ears like your words when you were in Iraq. Inferences lost in the miles, forcing our relationship to survive on faith.
The good times, with you, were fast and plentiful - screaming by so fast I hung on to my camera and your hand, clicking furiously, documenting the times we were happy for all of humanity, but mostly for you and me. I want to remember them when we are old and wrinkled, laughing toothless over all the years we will spend together.
9 days away from our 3rd Anniversary and we are readying to pack you up again, after an unexpected phone call. Your looming absence is entirely unbelievable, worsened by the "indefinite" quantifier that wrinkles my brow, making me so horrifically stubborn that I climb into bed with you, pressing my back into your chest so hard you exhale uncomfortably in your sleep, unaware that I am physically trying to burrow in to you.
I feel a little anxious, knowing what is in store. The cycles of separation. Acceptance, then loneliness, then day after day after day of just doing what you can to get by to get back to together.
It is unspoken that I want you to leave no more than you want to go. Do I understand? Yes. Would I go myself? Yes. These factors alone soften neither the blow nor the pending separation. To ask you to stay would be entirely selfish. I can only send you on your way and take comfort in the knowledge that this will be the last time.