Split Lip

At 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 3, 2014, you called me and said you’d “messed up.” I wasn’t prepared for what followed. You told me you’d fallen and smashed your face on the floor of your room. You ended up in the hospital, being stitched up. 6 stitches to the face, the left side of your lip—your beautiful lip that I’ve kissed—had been torn all the way through. A captain stitched you up and said if it hadn’t been done just right, you’d have had a cleft lip. It would be ok, though, you assured me, failing to reassure me. 

You then said you had to go. You needed to go home from the hospital and clean up your room as there was blood all over—a lot of it. I was speechless so I let you go. What could I say, feeling so powerless and distant? At 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 3, 2014, it struck home just how far from me you are.

I wanted to ask you if you were in a lot of pain. You see, the thought of you in pain is agonizing to me. I wanted to be there to take care of you. . .to put you to bed, clean up the blood. The thought of it, your vital fluid, spilled on the ground, horrified me—not because I was grossed out but because it should never be anywhere but in your body, pumping through you, keeping you alive and healthy. I wanted to ask you whether there would be a scar. I don’t care if it scars, but I know you do and it kills me to think of you feeling less handsome than you are. In short, I want to somehow make everything better. Stupid, huh?

Dumb or not, one fact remains. I have missed you every day for some time now. 6,000 miles has felt like such a yawning gulf between us. Until this moment, however, I didn’t know it could feel worse, feel like so much further. I want to be there with you. I need to not be half a world away.

I know, there’s nothing I can do for you at this moment. I know that even if I were there with you, there would not be a thing I could do for you. I know you’re strong and don’t need taking care of. Yet I feel helpless because I’m so far away. I want nothing bad to ever happen to you and yet I know that’s impossible, so my next wish is to be there with you when the bad things do happen.

It was just a mishap. An accident. It will heal, you will be fine and for that I am grateful. Scar or no, you are beautiful to me and I love you. But at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 3, 2014, I was suddenly struck by the thought that this distance between us is not something I can live with for much longer. You are my husband, we should be together. I should be there by your side the next time something happens.

I know, this is not something we can change right now. This is our life. You are a sailor. You are strong. I was a soldier and have been strong, too. I get it. I knew what I was signing up for.

It will never be easy to be apart from you, though. I don’t know how the countless military spouses before me have done it. I don’t know how much worse deployments are and I don’t want to. I don’t know how I’ll manage through this. I will though. For you. For us. But someday I will be there with you, by your side for all the good and the bad, the little mishaps and victories of life. Count on it.