The First Day

I started processing to go work in Afghanistan. It's been a long and difficult choice to make and even now as the emails with instructions on what to fill out and who to send them begin to stream in... I still don't know if it's the right thing to do. When I came home from Baghdad 10 months ago, (damn...has it been that long?), I felt in my heart like it was time. I was tired of living alone and even more tired of the desert. It was said by many that the desert stays inside you and that once there she never lets you forget. I don't know if I love her like that. I have often longed for her wondrous views and to feel her searing heat on my skin again. But I can't help but think she hurt me somehow. Not that pain has ever been a reason to keep me away from love, but it would certainly seem I'd yearn for something more from this particular lover. So anyway, here I am again, despite it all...my feet at the edge and my eyes searching the chasm for her stare.

I know it will take months from this point to send resume's and get physicals and background checks, etc., completed. I feel like I need to hurry and do the things here at home that I have wanted to do but haven't. I have yet to take my American Road Trip and that is weighing heavy on my mind. It's so strange how being away from home makes me feel so good now. I am literally never as happy as I am when I am somewhere other than home. So I must hit the road soon or suffer for not making the time.

I have also decided it wouldn't be fair to meet new women now as "dates" knowing good and well I may be gone by the end of summer. I have so many friends that I am confident I can find a "date" should a need arise. But looking for love is no longer going to be possible. Well, I guess that may be an over statement since love always looks for us whether we want to find it or not. And I don't know now if that has ever been my goal really. But that subject is a blog for another time.

It's raining here today but it's a storm of another kind I feel looming. Something is coming...
-JF