.....your life's value....**

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beloved LEGS....

.....you have a mustache.....you look like a completely different man.....your hand around my hand, the way you hold me, the way you look at me, the way you speak to me.....the look in your eye....everything is different....I stand back to take you in.....and I am sure, that even your soul is different.....

....but despite my trepidation of the man that stands before me, I am drawn in.....hypnotized.....I cannot stand even the slightest distance between us.....its impossible, ridiculous, irrational, but I want you physically touching me every second of every minute.....

....for the last several years, every single day has been about control.  Every single day has been about training, diet, scales, weight, and performance.  Boxing gave me control over my life when I didn't have control over my life.  Even though I couldn't control when you called, when you were home, when you had to leave, when you came back, I could control how much I trained, I could control what was on my plate, I could control my schedule, my performance if I trained right, dieted right, if I weighed the right amount.

.....and now....I just wanted to let go.....I wanted to go crazy, to lose control, I wanted to follow this strange man any where he wanted to go.....and so I did......

.....The first ten days a soldier is home, they have to attend "Re-integration."  Its almost as if you die and come back to life.  They have to re-join the real world doing things like reorganizing their existence including, medical, transportation, communication, living arrangement, and the way in which they are paid.

I was sitting next to you in one of these classes when you raised your hand and asked a question regarding compensation for taking enemy fire.  My mouth went dry and I look at you in shock.  Yes the man was sitting next to me in perfect health in perfect condition, but the idea that you were ever in harms way, the idea that any person would try to harm you......shocked me and hurt me severely.  Even more hard to swallow was the way in which you and these other men are "compensated" for these grave near misses......

.....I look around the room......all different kinds of men from all different types of places.....all in danger.....all filling out forms to determine how much money they are worth to our country......

......I can tell you.....while the sound of pens scribbling down on paper, the confusion of these government forms, questions in all directions for all scenarios.....I felt....devastated.....that these lives could even be measured like this......I wanted to cry....and to throw up......but I just looked at you.....because the only thing that soothes me.....is remembering how lucky I am you are back safely....

.....it got me thinking.....and made me quietly enraged.....that's how "they" get away with it.....they make us so thankful and feel so lucky you made it back that we don't even care what actually happened.....or how your lives are "calculated".......

......if I was to put a price or a number or a value on your life.....on what you mean to me......and honestly what your being means to the world.....it would be impossible....but if I was ever hard pressed......you are worth every ray of sunshine, every single star in the sky, the power of the moon....and me....whatever I would be worth to the world.....

.....Just another day in the life of an unlikely military wife....**