First Night Home

It was 3 a.m. when I woke up.

It took me a few minutes to realize I was home, in my own bed … after living in a 10-foot by 10-foot metal box for the last year, the largeness of the room, illuminated by the streetlights, seemed overwhelming.

Slowly, I took account of my limbs, rubbing the top of one foot, then the other, flexing my ankles, bending my knees. I stretched my body out flat, and then rubbed by right hipbone still bruised from where my 9mm rubbed against it the last year, before sliding my right hand across by belly … twisting slightly on to my left side. My left arm was asleep, my shoulder pinned under his head. I curled against him, the anger from the past weeks threatening my peace.

The bad evaluation, the letter of reprimand … the barriers broke and my mind was flooded with the anger that I had repressed over the last year – eking out just enough to make it home – to collapse here in this bed.

Only hours early my best friend had found me freshly showered and propped up by an army of pillows … the letters next to me on the nightstand. We had joked about them … the sheer stupidity of it all … the Slumlord Bigot from Mississippi, the Tower of Jello, Col. Kynikos … the barriers still strong.

Now in the darkness, I tried not to wake him as my body shook, the rage rippling through it. I wanted so badly to be an officer; I wanted to serve my country – I believed in citizenship and service. I had wanted my father, the Master Chief, to be proud of me, to love me. I had sacrificed so much and worked so hard to become an officer in the U.S. Army and now … .

Sacrificing my career to save him, to get him out of Iraq was worth it – I knew I had done the right thing, the just thing. Burying my face in his neck, wrapping my arm around him and pulling him closer to me, a tiny laugh escaped as I exhaling – I knew I would do it all again.