Something on my mind

While one person goes off to another country, new experience, and new people, there are always those who are left behind.  Friends, family, and significant others.  We rarely hear about them and what they're going through.  Why am I bringing this up?  Well, my...ok, this is where it gets complicated, but for lack of a better label so to speak, my significant other sent me a youtube video of surprise visits home from soldiers serving in the Middle East.  Well, not only did he win the supposed challenge of making me cry (though that's not much of a challenge if you know the right buttons to push), it also made me think of my up coming departure...and who I leave behind.  It also made me have romantic fantasies of returning home next Summer and running into his arms in the airport and him picking me up and spinning me around and kissing me.  (PS: yes, I am well aware that I am a hopeless romantic).  While fantasies are all well and good, they are still my fantasies.  My vision of everything being great.  I'm the one gallivanting off to Europe.  I'm the one getting to meet new people with accents and possibly even new men...with accents.  I'm the one who's getting a taste of a career.  And yeah, why not polish it off with a dramatic return home complete with waiting arms and a smile?  I mean, a girl can dream right?  Of course she can.  But it's not fair.  He doesn't say too much about what's going on inside him.  Only that it's hard.  While I'm enjoying 1,000 year old architecture eating a croissant at an equally old cafe, he's going to work, going to school, doing homework, playing video games, hanging with the guys, and seeing family.  Which all in all isn't bad.  But it's not new, not different.  And I'm not there.  Well, he won't be with me either.  I'll want to share my experiences with him, show him what I see, introduce him to the people I meet.  And I wonder, will he be wanting to tell me about his day at work, or his video game scores, or his time with the family?  Is he also thinking about reuniting next Summer?  On a more serious note, how many military wives, faced with a much harsher reality than simply their husband going to another country for a while, like what if he doesn't come back alive, are forced to create a sense of normalcy while their love is away?  How do they cope?  And how come they aren't revered like their soldier husbands?  Sorry, that was slightly a separate issue.  And I'm getting tired.  Thanks for reading.
Cheers, Keely