Page 72 of Protecting What Is Mine

Even if I found the right girl, even if she were standing right in front of me right now, we’d still be faced with the reality that I’m leaving again.

Soon.

Maybe it will happen for me too, eventually. But there’s something to be said for having someone to come back to. Someone you fall asleep thinking about. Someone who means so much, the thought of holding them one more time is enough to keep you fighting when the odds are stacked against you.

If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a hundred times with the men in my unit. It's not the young, HOOAH types, that don't know the word quit. Not the guys who spend every free minute pumping iron at the gym. No, it's the quiet ones. The career guys who have family back home depending on them. Those are the soldiers who don’t know how to fail.

If this trip home has done anything, it’s shown me that I’ve been missing that, probably for a while.

Even if I hadn’t realized it.

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