Currently Chasing: More than Words

So here’s my dilemma. There is a boy who loves me. Or let me rephrase. There is a boy who says he loves me. There is a difference.

We all remember the boy who loved me so much that he broke up with me over email the day after asking me to marry him. This same boy is also the reason I’m ‘widowed’ on my facebook page. He’s dead to me.

How could we forget the boy who texted me at 9 a.m. on Valentine’s Day last year to let me know he’d have to cancel our date because he ‘got laid’ the night before and felt guilty. All of this after assuring me that he was the luckiest man in the world to have even known me.

We remember the off again /on again boyfriend who loved me so much he slept with – well – everyone.

But here ladies and gentlemen is a man who says it, and also says he means it. What should I make of this?  Some of you say make nothing of it. After all, I’m in Afghanistan and this is NOT real life. It’s easy to say the L word out here and get away with it. Love love love…say it with me. Love love love. See how easy it rolls off the tongue when there is a possibility you could die from a random rocket attack?

Once you start throwing that word around in the states, where you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning twice than you do of a shrapnel wound from – well – anything;, the love words stops being as easy to say. Lo…cal. Lo…w budget. Lo…ok, it's just not working out. That’s what rolls off the tongue in the good ol’ US of A.

But for some reason, shrapnel or no shrapnel, I’m pretty sure this guy loves me. Like, loves me loves me, not just loves me.  And hearing someone say that and mean it scares me worse than the damn rocket attack.

You see, I’m used to hearing people tell me they love me. My parents say it. My daughter says it. My friends say it.  Many a man has said it. However, it has kind of always felt as simple as a hello or a goodbye. I love you is just something you say when you are about to get off the phone with someone. Or something you text before you go to sleep at night. Or something you say to someone after they’ve done something amazing for you.

But this boy…well he just says it. In the middle of the day. For no apparent reason other than he just wants to make me situationally aware of his love. And he says it. Like, he looks me in the eyes and says, I love you. And I get nervous like I should say something back or nod my head or run out of the room screaming … but he doesn’t expect any of that. He just tells me so that I know. And then he goes on with his day. And occasionally he’ll tell me again. Just in case I’ve forgotten. And I know deep down, he says he loves me, and he thinks he means it. Let me rephrase. He knows he means it.

He of course had a life before Afghanistan, and he will have one after. He’s made plenty of decisions since being here that make it both easy and impossible for us to have a future together. I find it difficult after spending so many years in the Navy to make any type of sound decision based on deployment feelings, so I just don’t.  I am anxious to get back to my daughter, my house, my job, my car, my clothes, my hairstylist, my indoor plumbing and my life. I’m also getting ready to go on vacation with a man that I’ve exchanged I love yous with for years and years. Only now I know what love looks like…and I’m anxious to see if I’ll recognize it on this vacation. Or if it will just get lost in the hello and end up a goodbye.