We cheered and applauded as the military cargo aircraft touched down in California. As I stepped onto the tarmac, now safely on American soil, I looked past the flight line to the harbor, and knew something was missing. The anxiety, paranoia, and anger that I had internalized over six months was gone. Half a year earlier, when my deployment flight took off, I’d felt like the bottom was falling out of my emotion. The first sensation upon arriving home in California was the absence of that feeling.