I don’t crumble at much. Military movies make me crumble. I wasn’t always that way; they never used to affect me at all. When Alex started the enlistment process, I started to look at them differently. Up until that point, they were history, other people’s lives. Once the military started to creep into the edges of my life, military movies became the embodiment of my greatest fears. I’ve barely begun writing this and tears are streaming down my face. Having to think about this for longer than a moment feels like my lungs are collapsing on themselves.
The thing I fear most in this world is losing Alex. It’s the one thing that I don’t think I would ever recover from. I am genuinely uninterested in a world he does not exist in.
He left for bootcamp five and a half years ago. Since the day I stood waiving as his bus drove away, I have worried. I have lived with a deeply rooted fear that the last time I saw him will be the last time I see him. War movies are the worst case scenario, but he’s in the military. It’s a scenario planted solidly in the plausible. And in the political climate we live in, it feels like anything is possible. Things move slowly and wish-washy in the military, until they don’t. Then, they move incredibly fast. “Surprise! You’re going on a DET tomorrow for two weeks.” You never know for sure until it’s happening.
The fear worsens when he’s deployed. I’m lucky. I am so incredibly lucky. I have never forgotten that fact. He’s been deployed to really cushy areas. He’s on his third deployment. Hopefully his last. Even in the cushy areas, there are so many unknowns. Often times, I will go weeks and even months without hearing anything from him. More often than not, I don’t hear about things until he’s home. Let’s be honest, I don’t really know when he’s coming home until a week or two before. I once found out he was home when he called to tell me he’d arrived. We’ve missed Christmases and birthdays and celebrations for almost six years. I don’t care as long as he comes home. During his first deployment to Japan, there was a pretty awful tsunami, which they had to evacuate for. I found out about the storm from my best friend, who was watching the news. I didn’t learn about the evacuation until eight months after he was home from another MilSO. At the time, it was terrifying. They had no power, so no way to communicate. He was fine having a grown-man slumber party with his buddies in the barracks. But human nature takes us to the darkest, deepest recesses of our minds. I’m very much an Eeyore, so this has been a rough five and a half years in my dark, deep recess.
It’s hard not to worry when their job description includes a weapon. It’s one thing to go shooting in Grandma and Grandpa’s pasture with your dad’s childhood rifle. And a completely different thing to be issued a gun. They are trained. They practice. They aim. They breathe. In case someday they have to shoot. I am terrified of that day because it means someone else is aiming too. War movies remind me of this. They’re all guns ablaze, awesome explosions, a clear enemy, a clear hero. War isn’t that. It’s not that at all. It’s not for entertainment. War is terrifying. War is people against people, who all think they’re right. They’re all just fighting for the people they love at home. They’re young. They’re so young. Alex went in at 24, and that was considered “ancient.” Most kids go in at 18 on their first breath of freedom. It’s too young to die.
War movies mostly show the military side of things in the thick of it. There’s more to it. There are the families. There is the after. I remember watching American Sniper when it came out. The scene where he’s on the phone with his pregnant wife, and she hears the gun fire on the other side of the world before the line cuts out. She crumpled. I crumpled. Alex was deployed at the time. I can’t imagine. I don’t want to imagine. That scene was one of the hardest for me to watch. Amy Schumer’s character in Thank You For Your Service is still my favorite of her performances. She donated her paycheck to TAPS and Fisher House because some people’s fears come true, and their service members don’t come home or come home forever changed. Us at home. We have stories. We have lives that keep going, but there’s a part of us pausing. Waiting to breath until the next email or phone call or hug. Worry. I’m good at worrying. Every time there’s an unfamiliar phone number from a distant place. Every day I don’t see his name in my inbox. Every single moment there is silence, there is an ache waiting to know he’s ok.
Military movies put my fears on a big screen. They show all the crap, I don’t want to think about as a possibility. I don’t want to think about his death. What about mine? The military dictates my life in a way, but it dictates every part of Alex’s. They are away from us. They don’t know what’s going on at home. When I was 24, I was in the hospital for a long time in total organ failure. I was dying. The doctors told me to prepare myself and those I loved. Alex wasn’t deployed, but he couldn’t come. I didn’t know if I would live or die. I didn’t know if I would ever see him again. He knew I was sick and called as much as he could. I wasn’t able to communicate well, so I couldn’t tell him the extent of how sick I was. I also knew he couldn’t come, so I didn’t tell him how sick I was because it wasn’t going to change anything. I wasn’t going to make him worry. I remember laying in the hospital bed, and all I wanted was to hold his hand one more time. I would have given anything for him to be there. I was too sick for many tears to come, so I closed my eyes and prayed to a God I don’t believe in. To this day, it is one of the most painful times to recall because I needed him. He couldn’t be there. I wasn’t worried, but I was scared.
Alex works on helicopters. He’s on a boat. He’s somewhere in the world in the ocean. The likelihood he will ever have a gun pointed at him is pretty low. I am lucky. I am so lucky. Accidents happen. I know of so many cases where flukes happen and lives are ruined, ended. (I live with a life and body ruined by a fluke that happened one day on base in Jacksonville, North Carolina because of a helicopter. But that’s a story for another day.) Bad things can happen to anyone anywhere. The military just magnitizes that fear. Those men and women sign up willing to risk their lives. That is honorable and noble. They have my respect and support. The people who love them stand by hoping to never get the call. Service men and women may be willing to give the ultimate sacrifice, but I am not. I am not willing to sacrifice Alex.
