There's this feeling that you get when you are overseas that is almost indescribable. I am amongst people I have worked alongside for years, brothers and sisters and arms, yet I've never felt so alone. My logic would like to attribute this to realistic causes, to help shield the pain- like the fact that I am away from friends and family, or I'm just having an off day, or maybe I ate something funny. But lo, the true answer comes shining forth not from the head, but the heart. Physical contact in some way, shape or form. It can be as simple as a hug or as extravagant as wild, tantric, sensual encounters, but some form. Soldiers need to be held as much as we like to hold others, although it seems as though we avoid it. The ever-present macho physique causes us to think twice about public displays of affection, whether fraternal or with a significant-other. It is because of this that I feel so alone, an outcast in a desolate war zone as though I was walking on Titan with nothing in sight. However, silver linings are ever-present, and this one is created through the promise of the future. For the greatest feeling in the world is waking up next to someone you love, in my case a woman (not that there's anything wrong with that) and the morning sunlight cascades in through some bedroom window. Most people don't know or won't tell you this, but the time at which a girl is most beautiful is when she first wakes up. Whether she is languid or energetic, tense or relaxed she, at that very moment, is in her most fragile state. Entirely unguarded. And that, is what makes the moment beautiful. The promise of many mornings like that to come drive home not only the reason I am here, but the reason I exist, why I live and breath.