Distance

Distance can mean more than one thing - there is the physical distance, which is the actual distance in miles, kilometers, feet, whatever you want to measure it in; then there is the emotional distance, which is how far you really feel from a certain person or place. 

When my husband was in Afghanistan, the physical distance varied from time to time but from where our house was in Germany to where his main location was deployed was 3685.3 miles.  That many miles seems significant enough, but there were many days that the emotional distance was so much greater. 

Throughout his deployment, we never once used Skype or any of the other programs that are out there where family members can see their soldiers face to face.  He was never in a location where the internet was strong enough for anything like that and most the time he was in a place where there was no running water, so internet was just a dream that was a world away.  So our main source of communication was a cell phone he has bought there that had very limited service and snail mail.  This meant that there were more days that went by that I didn't hear from him than ones that I did. 

Even though as days went by there was so much I wanted to share with him about what was going on with me and wanted to know how things were going with him, when we were able to talk all of that went out the door.  Whenever I sat down to write him, I would 'edit' what I put in there and I eventually found myself with two different types of letters - the ones I mailed and the ones that went in a notebook in my nightstand for him to get after he was safely home.  The letters I sent were about good things happening and full of 'I miss you' and 'I love you'.  The letters that weren't sent were full of the deeper feelings - the fear of the missions he was going on, the pain I was experiencing - not only from missing him, but also from all the medical treatments I was going through, the bad parts of the day, etc, etc. 

Over time though, whether you share everything or just little parts of each of your lives on the opposite ends of a deployment - that emotional distance can still kick in and can make a few thousand miles seem more like a million miles.  This tends to happen to a lot of people closer to the end of a deployment or separation as the anticipation of reuniting and coming home starts setting in, expectations change or situations change.  Soldiers may get manifested for a flight to come home and then last minute something happens and everything changes or another soldier took priority and so your soldier won't be on this flight.  As with anything else that relates to deployment and military separations, there is no easy fix for the emotions that go into it.  Each spouse and service member goes through different emotions than another spouse and service member.  The key is to remember - if your soldier is getting manifested for that flight - it means he is coming home to you, and in the big scheme of things, that's all that really matters.