When we were young, our relationship was filled with emotional extremes. You and I were dramatic. We felt everything as if it was Mount Everest. We were big, bold, intense, passionate. We were all-in. When I reflect on the way I feel about this current deployment, I am surprised by the lack of extremes. This morning I woke up and ached for you, but it was not the ache that I would have expressed twenty years ago. It was deeper, slower, more quiet and still. I suppose I would describe it as more of a hollow sense. 

Last night as I lay in bed on the phone with you, we both went silent. You and I were drained from our very different experiences. Instead of filling the moments with words we just breathed. In that moment I closed my eyes and pretended that you were not on the other side of the planet. I pretended that this is not what it currently is. Maybe that's why I woke up feeling so hollow.

Since you have been gone, I have been struck by my difficulty to find words. Words are what I do, they're kind of my thing, and living these moments without you feels difficult to define. Gone are the extreme emotions that I have grown accustomed to in regards to deployment, here are these empty, drained, quiet ones that I don't particularly care for. What is there to say that has not already been said in spades?

You are my best friend. That phrase is thrown around so flippantly in our society, yet for me, it encompasses a degree of loyalty that is not common in our age. I have followed you, loved you, ached for you, supported you, and been united to you for so many years that I don't really know what the world without you means to me. Empty. 

I sit in Mass and struggle to even know what to pray. Normally, my heart and my brain are overwhelmed by communication. I often have to work hard to slow everything down and concentrate what is in front of me. Lately, it's silence. In an eerie way. I struggle to be present at all, though my body is sitting there. I feel disconnected and disengaged. I feel as if I have nothing to say. I find some solace that there are periods where silence is vital. 

Everything feels so different, Love. I don't recognize the world this way. So I sit in this quiet, feeling this sense of silence and hollowness. I wish we were together.