She Who Waits

I was doing some reading (not a good idea) and stumbled upon information for the unit my husband was supposed to go to. They're currently in Afghanistan. I'm sitting here in tears, but they're very strange to me because they're motivated by two very conflicting emotions.

As a spouse, a woman who wants to spend her life with her husband, I'm actually thankful he's not there. They're in what seems, to me, a more dangerous area than he's in now, with more austere conditions. I'm thankful that while he isn't exactly in a safe place behind a desk, it seems less dangerous than where he would have been had he stayed with this unit. I have contact from him regularly, even if it is just a one line email to tell me he's going to bed at some insane hour after a 22 hour day.

The other part of me hurts for him because they're where he wants to be, where he feels he can make the most difference, where he would have been had he not been given this particular assignment. He is an infantry Marine, through and through, and he's been itching to go back to Afghanistan since his tour in 2004. He is very intrigued by the history, the culture, on top of his normal Marine tendencies. I know he isn't thrilled to be where he is right now and seeing the young men who might have been beside him had things turned out the way he wanted makes my heart hurt.

It's a bit of a double edged sword ... or multi-faceted tears, I guess.