Day 352

50 Weeks To Go

Last night the perfect comparison hit me.

Sitting at home, experiencing deployment stateside, is like climbing the Great Wall of China.

Your legs are burning, your heart is pounding, and you make yourself take one more step. The climb is steep, the steps alternatively shallow, near, far, wide, but always unpredictable.

You pause and take a few gasping breaths, and, looking up to see how much further there is to go, you stop breathing for half-a-second.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

There are several - seemingly hundreds - of staircases left until you reach the apex. You are nowhere near the final destination, but you feel like you've already gone so far!

And, finally, you feel humbled. Because you know there are people who centuries ago and still today climbed this wall every day, several times a day, even. And you wonder how they survived, and how strong their hearts and lungs must be.

Day 6: Something You Hope to Never Do

My something is something I know I have to do someday. I just hope it doesn't come too soon.

At my grandfather's funeral, I sat in between my brother and sister, holding onto them. Surrounded by the melancholy and morbidity, a thought hit me - I am going to outlive my siblings.

Both my brother and sister are diabetic, and neither of them have taken very good care of it for years. Even if they had taken perfect care of themselves since their diagnosis, they still aren't statistically going to live as long as a non-diabetic - ergo, Me.

So, I live with this fact.

My siblings are my world. I would literally do anything for them. I want to see them grow up, have careers, have families, and do all the normal things.

Some things are inevitable. I just hope that this certainty is far, far, far down the road.