{"id":164,"date":"2009-06-01T17:45:26","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T23:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myheroesathome.com\/blog\/?p=164"},"modified":"2009-06-01T17:47:53","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T23:47:53","slug":"dear-deployment-you-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myheroesathome.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/dear-deployment-you-won\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Deployment: You Won"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Deployment,<\/p>\n

You won.
\nI tried to fight you; but in the end you were more powerful than me. More powerful than him. More powerful than us.<\/p>\n

You changed him. After knowing you, he is not a man I recognize. I loved him the best I knew how, but I could not understand the secrets you two shared. Even now that you are gone, I know he sees you in his dreams. I know he feels you close, even now – still gaining on him when his mind is quiet. He cannot outrun you. He has so many secrets now that he won’t tell anyone but you. And I believe one day they will destory him, just like they destoyed us.<\/p>\n

I didn’t want him to meet you. Begged him to walk away. But you are a manipulative master. You woo with promises of excitement and and destiny; training put to good use. Then, once the committment is made, you deliver only death and destruction and distance. And no one who knows you is ever the same. Your power is transformational. I am jealous of the loyalty you command. Your ability to make him choose you over me. To claim so many others like him, and leave so many like me behind to wonder what we could have done differently.<\/p>\n

But the answer is: nothing.<\/p>\n

There is no way to beat you once you take hold. And that’s the part no one realizes until it’s too late. No debriefs, no classes, no counseling sessions can ever un-teach the lessons they have learned from you. No amount of time can fully heal the pain you’ve caused. And as he drove away, I heard you laughing. Because it’s not just him you took. You have forever changed me as well.<\/p>\n

And so, deployment, you won. He is gone now. Alone with his memories of you.
\nAnd me, with my memories of him.\"Paul<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Deployment, You won. I tried to fight you; but in the end you were more powerful than me. More powerful than him. More powerful than us. You changed him. After knowing you, he is not a man I recognize. I loved him the best I knew how, but I could not understand the secrets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,10,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civilian-support","category-understanding-ptsd","category-re-deployment","category-relationship-changes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myheroesathome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myheroesathome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myheroesathome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myheroesathome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myheroesathome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myheroesathome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myheroesathome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myheroesathome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myheroesathome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}