Moget Mato

I'm a soldier and a husband. I've got the soldiering down, that part is easy - it's the husband part that's hard. Everyday I spend here is a day away from her, another day where she has to worry about where I am or how I'm coping with all the little stressors that pile up during a day. I used to ask myself what she saw in me but now I just accept some things as complete mysteries that can't be solved, at least not by me. If you've been here you already know, if you're a spouse left behind, all I can say is that it is easier for us, the soldiers who are over here in the middle of it all, we have a steady purpose and it sustains us and drives us on, whereas those left behind are also left with all the worry and doubt that comes with not always knowing what happens next. Every morning I wake up I find myself clutching my rifle as if it were my spouse, the side of my head indented from resting on the handguards, my arm numb from the pressure of the weapon laying across it... It's the hardest change for me, for so long I've taken for granted that when I go to sleep with her beside me, we'll wake up together in the morning, such a simple thing, yet so significant to me now...