One of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life is let the man I just married travel half way around the world. Going through deployment was harder on me than anyone ever realized. While he was gone the “burning of the Quran” occurred and I panicked. Every day I panicked. The year he was gone was the longest anxiety attack of my life. I hold no more romantic feelings toward my ex husband but the trauma is still very real. When you feel what I felt that wound lasts a lifetime. I feared every day he was gone that he would die. That I would have officials show up at home or at work to deliver the news. That they would shatter my world mid day and I would have to find the will to live each moment following. The father of my child and the person I believed was the love of my life would die thousands of miles from me and I would relive our last goodbye in my mind a thousand times. It didn’t happen that way though. All the torment and pain I hadn’t even imagined had yet to have happened. I died a little each day he was gone. When he finally came home I was ecstatic but something was different. I didn’t realize what a year could do, it wasn’t that I changed as he feared I would. He did the changing. He wasn’t the man I married. And that’s when it happened. Every day I watched him die a little more. It was slowly then all at once. That man, the one I loved and married, he’s dead. He died a long time ago and no one will ever understand that mourning. My son thinks his dad just works a lot and I don’t have the heart to tell him the truth. He’s dead and the carcass of the soldier I once loved walks the planes of this earth empty and haunting the people who gave him everything. With every national anthem, pledge of allegiance and tribute to the soldiers of this nation the scars burn and sting. The man I married died the day he got on that plane and didn’t ever return, that man died and lost his family for your freedom. And for mine.
The Mad Mind of Coraline 
This is the most moving post I have ever read! My heart goes out to you, your family and you husband, whose soul was taken from him. I do not know how you feel because I’ve never been through that. But I think of families and soldiers like this all the time and it breaks my heart. I just wanted you to know I hear you and I am heartbroken for you. Warmest regards ~amy
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