Bags

These moments inevitably come when you live this life. The moment where all the bags come out, and the sorting through, and the preparations come... The moment when he packs up his things to leave...me...

It's amazing how utterly tiny I feel. I am always surprised by the amount of emotions. It's almost like being suffocated and devastated and... I don't even know what else.

I want to crawl into a hole and hide. I want to disappear in the shadow of this giant mountain that I am being forced to climb. I want to dig in my heels and refuse to go. I don't want to do this.

Do you know what it feels like to have your heart ripped from your chest? It feels like watching him pack up his things. It feels like driving him to a place and dropping him off in the darkness, while holding hands because you don't know if you ever will again. It feels like watching him take his things out of your car and seeing him shut the trunk. It feels like hugging him as the sun rises, the whole time begging and pleading for it to just. slow. down. It feels like listening to your children cry a hysterical cry at the top of their lungs "GET ME OUT OF HERE!" It feels like going home, wasting a period of time, so you can go meet him in some smelly, not air conditioned place and wait for him to arrive. It feels like agony while the moments when they were "supposed" to get there tick on by, so your moments of togetherness are shortened. Especially because you know that damned air plane is sitting on that damned tarmac waiting to take him to that damned country. It feels like waiting and looking for him as the pool of bodies wearing the same uniform come walking in, carrying their weapons. It feels like watching him take off his beautiful, beautiful, persona of world's most amazing husband and father, and put on the persona of soldier, warrior, fighter. It feels like holding him for the final precious moments before they say it's time for him to leave. It feels like hugging him and kissing him when all you want to do is collapse to the floor in hysteria. It feels like breaking concrete when you have to unwrap yourself from him and watch him walk away. It feels like a slow, painful, agonizing death watching him go to a formation that you can't go to...getting on a bus you can't get in...driving away to a place you can't go... It feels like running to your vehicle, while attempting to ignore the blood pouring out of your chest, and your lungs beginning to forget how to breathe, so that you can speed like a madman to the tarmac area. It feels like jumping out of your car and waiting so that you can wave to him that one. last. time. One last time... What if this is my one last time? It feels driving up to your house and seeing his car parked in the driveway and thinking just for a split second that this is all just some nightmare, or distant dream. It feels like walking into your home with his smell, his stuff, his presence, his shoes, his dirty socks, his clothes on the floor, his hairs on the sink, his slippers, his...his..absence. It feels like putting your children to bed and sitting on your sofa without him there. It feels like going to bed in a bed that is haunted with the presence that was there not too long ago. It feels like empty hands that know what it's like to be full. It feels like kisses that have evaporated and remember the warmth that was there not too long ago. It feels like crying that never ends. It feels like heartache that never heals. It feels like a sadness...a deep and heavy sadness that is always with you.

My inevitable moment is all too close. It's too intense and too real. It doesn't matter if I try to run away or to ignore it. D Day is coming. I hate this...