Hi friend.

Every one has a dream: to be a lawyer, to win the lottery, to be successful, to have a beautiful family. Mine is to be to be an English teacher with a happy husband and just as happy kids, to adopt all the dogs in the world, to learn everything my heart desires, to live long, and to help as many people as I possibly can. When I was little, it was to eat grilled cheese everyday and be a ballerina.

Yours happens to be that you want to join the army or navy or marines (you haven’t told me which one yet) and to serve and protect our country. Which honestly scares me so much. I’m not going to try to convince you to not enlist; I know this is what you want and you’re so stubborn that I can’t change your mind even if I tried. But hear me out before you stop reading this, okay?

There are very logical reasons why I’m scared. First of all, your my best friend. I tell you everything, you are the one person who knows me better than anyone else, sometimes even better than I know myself sometimes. You always know what I want to eat when I ask what I should get for lunch (most often Chick-Fil-A), you know my favorite color, what movies I can watch on a constant loop for an entire weekend and still not get bored of, and even what I have planned for my wedding when I’m older. We talk seven days a week, 24 hours a day. One of the main reasons I don’t want you to enlist is because I would lose the one person I talk to everyday without fail. That scares me so much

An other reason I’m scared is that you are like a brother to me. Even though you get on my nerves all the time and I more often than not want to reach through my phone and strangle you, I’m still very protective of you. This includes protecting you from everything, from all the girls you meet who want to steal your heart, to the guys on the other side who will potentially be firing at you. I don’t want anything to hurt you ever, and how can I stop that when you’re on the other side of the world?

The final reason why I’m scared is the typical, “war changes a person” argument that you know I can’t have without completely breaking down and bawling for a least 2 hours. War changes people, and I can’t imagine you being anything or anyone other than who you are and who I met you as; the person who is always smiling and tries to see the best in others, who trusts me and has opened up to me when i know that was so hard for you. I don’t want to lose that person ever.

But regardless of how scared I am and how badly I want you to change your mind, I’m still forever and always going to be your biggest supporter. I may be half way across the country and 1,397 miles away, but I’m still so proud of you and I still love you no matter what. I know that this is what you want, and I’m going to stand by whatever you want to do.