tonight i must

so, another day closer to jon. to this brief stint of normalcy in the vast, inelastic world of the army machine.
fuck the army.
it's my own fault, you know, for loving jon and everything, but it's not like you just get to decide who you love. i guess some people do, but generally they've been aided in some fashion by promises or liquor or amphetamines.
i am going to clean the house furiously, make the rest of the wedding-related appointments, do oceans of laundry, and get odin ready (ie. half-packed) to go to doug's before jon gets here on the 15th. things will be awful for a few days as he and i both pretend that everything's the same as it was when he left, that we both operate still as we did when we were a unit, that it's not unnatural that neither of us remembers how to sleep next to someone any longer. i'll pretend that his authoritarian and concise behavior doesn't bother me, isn't strange, doesn't hurt me every second; he'll convince himself that i haven't grown inwardly independent, that i haven't shut doors to my personality and that i am, actually, quite identical to the stephanie that he left in january.
things are going to be awkward physically. i simultaneously long for his touch and shudder to think of being touched by jon while he isn't himself. while he's still the army's jon. i've never been without love and attention, physically speaking, for this long before; i've never been nervous to be near a man and i've never wanted and feared something so much.
i can't say any of this to jon. he's wonderful, he's so sweet and amazing, he owns my heart and i would never dream of feeling anything but complete love for him, but i can't explain myself to him very well. even about simple things. he and i live on different planes, or at the least, he lives here and i live here also, only in a more glittery extra-dimensional sort of version. when i say things to him he understands, but when i expound on things or get philosophical or synesthesic he gets a clouded glaze to his soft eyes and i feel like i'm running in circles.
i love him for it but can't explain why. it's a small bulleted item on the list of ways jon is different from the boys in my past and it possibly is the most significant because it allows me a sort of anonymity from him, it keeps me feeling like part of me is only me, that i can share myself completely with him but still retain emotional independence. jon understands my person but i like that my personality has twists that are difficult for him to navigate.
i love jon so much, but i'm so worried about him being here. by the time we get over my previously-explained awkward phase it will be nearly time for him to go back. and i have to go home from ocean city to unpack his things and wash his things and put away his things just like i had to do back in january after that stupid yellow ribbon ceremony, and it is going to kill me, just like in january. twice this year i have to say goodbye to him knowing that i'll hear from him only rarely, that he's going to be melted and molded into somebody else's version of an ideal person and that when he's finally allowed to come home to me i will not only have to undo everything that's been done to him but redo everything i had done myself.
the only good thing i've found in this is that it's really the last time i can do things the way i'm used to, it's a few months of saying goodbye to a part of myself.
the part that likes to drink way too much wine and listen to music that's way too loud and make a huge mess of paint and magazine pages and plaster and glass on the kitchen floor, the part that likes to pass out every night with all the lights still on and my face smashed pillow-forward into a book or two, that watches alice in wonderland alone so i can say all the words and sing all the songs and make all the sound effects.
because i could do all these things after we're married, but i'm not going to. well. maybe the wine and the art part, but jon rarely appreciates what comes from those evenings (like the fetus collection. he's not a big fan of my fetus art).
i don't miss the times i had when i was younger, all the bizarre happenings with heather and others. not that i didn't love them. i just feel like that was then and this is now and those times were great, but i don't long for them the way that i did, when jon was here, to spend six hours alone in the bathtub. if heather showed up on my door one day with treats and beer and people to stay up until 6am with talking about fuck knows what i'd be elated, i'd have a great time, i'd remember how great it was to do that every night, but the next day i wouldn't have qualms about going back to what i live now.
i will, however, have qualms about six-hour baths.
i dunno.
i can't wait for jon to come home. i just wish it was for good and that i didn't have to send him back. i have to go find a movie to watch and something to knit (or to spin?), and i have to take some pictures of what i made with my most recent finished handspun yarn (so adorable). i should finish spinning is what i should do. no sense in having one and a half singles and a basket of yellow merino hanging out in the living room that is already flooded with yarn.