Modern Love: A Soldier Leaves a Girl Behind - Modern Love

For a long time I had this crazy idea that I could change the world if I just worked hard enough. The downside of having that idea is that it took me away from home for long periods of time.

I dated Kathryn while I volunteered on the fire-and-rescue department, while I traveled the country for seven months with AmeriCorps, and while I was away for five months at basic training.

Kathryn was always at home waiting for me. All told I was away for an entire year of the two and a half years we dated.

I met Kathryn when I was 22 and she was 18. The short version of our story sounds great: Her house caught fire and I was in the fire department.

The long story is less romantic: I wasn’t on the call and she wasn’t even home. She messaged me on Facebook a few days later when she saw a comment I left about the fire department on a mutual friend’s wall. We chatted online for a few days, then texted, then saw a movie and had lunch, and that was the start of her first relationship and my longest.

We went to the beach and swam, held hands at the Fourth of July fireworks, went on roller coasters at Six Flags, ate Thanksgiving dinner with each other’s families, exchanged gifts on Christmas. We cried when I had to leave for long periods of time.

When I got back from basic training a couple of years ago, I felt different, as if I was doing things with my life and Kathryn wasn’t. I wanted something more, something bigger, and it didn’t seem that she did, so I broke up with her. She was crushed, but she didn’t try very hard to change my mind. Maybe she knew me well enough to know that when I decide to do something, there is no stopping me.

A few months later, in December, something bigger did happen. My National Guard unit was selected for a 2012 deployment to Afghanistan. With our country engaged in two wars, I knew it was not if I was going to war but when. Suddenly our monthly drills got more intense, and our annual two weeks of training that summer made me think over what was good in my life.

I called Kathryn and told her I was still in love with her and I was a fool to have let her go. She said she had a new boyfriend and was happy with him and didn’t want me back.

I looked on her Facebook page and saw pictures of him and her swimming at the beach and riding the roller coasters at Six Flags. I felt as if I was in a “Twilight Zone” episode where I woke up to discover someone else had replaced me in my own life. Even though Kathryn said she didn’t want me back, she entertained the texts I sent saying I loved her.

One day while she was in the shower, her boyfriend went through her phone and saw the texts, and their relationship ended shortly after. Two weeks later our new relationship started.

It was a lot different from the first time. Instead of going to school, Kathryn had a full-time fashion job in New York City that she commuted to every day from her parents’ home in North Jersey. She dyed her blond hair red, and she was less loving and affectionate.

Reminders of her ex-boyfriend were all over: the stuffed animal on her bed, the iPhone he bought her. I tried to ignore the image of her with someone else, and I tried even harder to make our new relationship like our old one. I tried, but I didn’t do so well.

Our evenings together mainly consisted of us eating takeout and her falling asleep on the couch as we watched reruns of “Project Runway.” Light from the television filled the dark room and flickered on us like a fire but gave no warmth. The space between us on the couch spoke more about our relationship than we did to each other.

After two months of this, we were eating dinner one evening when I brought up the elephant in the room: “What are we going to do when I deploy?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, quietly.

“Do you still want to date while I’m gone?”

She looked down at her plate. “Not really.”

“So then what are we doing?”

Again, quietly, she said, “I don’t know.”

Kevin Farrell is a specialist in the United States Army currently deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan, with the 508th Military Police Company out of Teaneck, N.J.

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