Why are we so afraid to really say what's on our minds or really what's happening in our lives? Is it because we are afraid that we'll lose the facade of the loving wife waiting at home for her knight in shining armour and that all is well in the castle?
Here's my unsaid....I purposely keep stuff inside so my husband and I don't fight when he calls because deep inside I am afraid that he won't call back if we fight about something. I don't tell my friends and family that I sometimes cry at night so hard that my stomach actually hurts the next day because I don't know how I am going to make it a whole year pretending everything is ok. I am scared to death that when he comes home that I will lose it because I won't know how to be real again and I will be too scared of getting hurt to let him back in. Sometimes when people are talking to me inside I'm screaming to just leave me alone and that they aren't the person I want to see standing in front of me. I fantasize occassionally that I can get in the car and drive away into a new life that doesn't hurt anymore. Secretly for all the reasons that everyone is so proud of me because I have been calm and together so far are the same reasons that will eventually kill off the real me and I won't ever be able to come back. I am angry and I hate everyone who had anything to do with taking my life away from me just when it was getting started. I am angry with him because I don't think he will ever know really what this year will do to me. I feel guilty because I know if I was a good wife and a good person I would be more worried about what this year will do to him. I worry that when he comes home that he will be so distant and blocked off from me that I wont want to deal with anymore pain and our relationship will end in bitterness and anger and I will lose my best friend when all I really want is to have him back.
These are all the things I keep inside and hide behind my "I'm a military wife and I'm soooo strong" face. There I said it.
I mentioned to him a couple days ago that I was reading the profiles to some of the other wives in our unit to get to know them a little better. What I ended up noticing was that I don't feel like I fit in anywhere. I kinda feel like one day I'm going to be walking somewhere and they are going to see me on the street and point and yell that I'm a poser. I shouldn't call myself an army wife.
I know this seems kinda weird. I really understand that and I'm not losing what little of my sanity I have left, but bear with me for a moment. My husband and I dated for a couple years before we got married. We got married this past May. It is now 9 months later and we haven't been together for most of our marriage. Prior to meeting him I was divorced and a mother of two. I went back to school (which I'm finished next month....yahoo) and I worked full time and took care of them and all that they had going on. I know how to take care of things on my own and that part of our separation doesn't bother me at all because that's the life I'm used to. This is where I don't feel like I fit. I just miss him. I just want him around because I like him as a person and I love him as a man. But I don't feel like I have the right to be put in the category as the other wives because they are dealing with everything on their own, some new, some again, but it's not the norm for them.
The other part is that frankly, I hear of some of the things the guys do for their wives to let them know they love them and my husband isn't like that. I know I'm not the typical girly wife and he's probably just used to me not needed that sort "love", but sometimes I do want to feel special and like I'm important to him just because of who I am and not just because I take care of him.
I don't think any of this even made sense, but it has been rolling around in my head and I just wanted to get it off my mind.
I would like to just say again, thank you for all the great support. It does make a difference.
I go from one minute thinking maybe I don't love him enough to the next day feeling like I can't do one more minute apart from him. I do feel that this separation is not helping our relationship grow. How can it? We aren't with each other. The longest conversation we've had usually lasts about a half hour..most of them are a few minutes. I feel so far away from him, like I'm not really married and he really doesn't exist and one morning I'm going to wake up and look at my hand and the rings will be gone and I'll realize this has just been one big "Dallas" dream.
Speaking of dreams, I've been having doosies lately, which isn't helping me at all. Every other dream is him ignoring me or pretending he doesn't know me. Or worse, he is someplace with someone else. Or last night was him telling me he just doesn't love me the same way anymore. So I guess as much as I put it to rest during my waking hours and go about my day, it never truly goes away. It just lies in wait until I'm not doing anything else and comes out to haunt me. I've really had enough.
I will be able to see him in 6 weeks. I'm actually really nervouse about it. Mostly of opening back up and feeling all the stuff I've hidden away for so long. How can a few days be enough to say goodbye again? And how do you say goodbye again? This time knowing he's leaving and he won't be in a safe place anymore. Letting them go to stay back home and wait day by day for some word that everything is ok. Broken conversations, moments that aren't long enough, the dreaded missing the call. A year of that is ahead of me and I think I'm already so tired of living this way. I still have a full year from now. How? I want so many lost moments back and I can't ever go back and it's killing me inside.
Oh, and just a word to those wives out there who have their husbands home and say to a military wife whose spouse is deployed that you hardly ever get to see your husband because you work opposite schedules and only get a few days per week with each other can bite my tired lonely ass when you say those stupid things to me and I don't fully respond with a poor you. Wake up people......
Ok, I'm fine with all the flowers and candy and all that crap....it really wasn't until someone's husband came to work to visit her and told her he got a chalet for the weekend for the two of them. We used to do that. That bothered me. Now I'm sad.......I want him back.
The great news is that he's coming home next month for a few days and then we are driving back to his base for his final ceremony. I really want to see him again, but what is killing me is how are you supposed to act normal during that time when you know you are trying to squeeze everything in in a few short days? I'm honestly scared that I will do something to ruin it because I will look at him and see again what I will be losing for a year. A year?!!! Who decided this was ok?
It's been a little over 3 weeks and my emotions have run amok. I've been angry, sad, bitter, scared, dead, and just plain confused. That can happen over a span of time or all the emotions running together at once. What is a year going to do? What is it going to feel like if we can only talk every few weeks? How do you sleep? How do you think? How do you function?
And now he will be with me and I am actually frozen. I want so badly to see him and be with him again, but I don't want to say goodbye again. Especially knowing this time it isn't just to send him somewhere safe....this goodbye is the one that has to last for a year. This is the one that is going to matter the most and how am I supposed to hug him goodbye and let go? How can you just let go to someone that fills every part of your soul and your supposed to just walk away and hope and pray that the next year of your life flies by so you can finally say hello again?
Yes it's irrational but I want someone from the military to explain to me why it's ok to take our husbands away and leave us here alone to worry and be lonely while they do battle with enemies that are cowards and can't even face them when they fight. They have to hide and set things off and run away like little bullies. Our men stand there and take it and they have to go through all this red tape just to be able to defend themselves. Well, if no one is going to let my husband protect himself so he can come home to me so that we can resume our lives with each other, the way it was meant to be then get out of my way and let me do it. Let all of us do it. Or just bring them home where they belong.
I want to rage, but there is no one to rage against. I want to beat the crap out of my demons but I can't tell where they are coming from. All I know is that one morning I woke up with my husband by my side and that night when I crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep, I was alone and he was gone. That is my reality right now and I hate it.
It's been awhile since I last wrote. So much has happened and not happened. I was re-reading my last post and it seems the tide has turned. I was talking about how much he had changed and how it wasn't fair to those of us left behind, but let me tell you, something has changed in me. I don't take crap from anyone, including him now. I don't know why. I'm not mean or a witch about it, but if something isn't ok with me, I say it. Before, I would keep my mouth shut and shove it down in my gut and go on until I exploded about something else. Part of this change though hasn't been good for him. He said I don't tell him I miss him as much as he misses me and last week he blew up about something really stupid and when he got off the phone the guys tore him a new one about it because they heard him. After that, I told him exactly what went through my head the next couple days. I told him how I wasn't going to live the next year in fear of what if we fight and then we can't talk or then he gets hurt or anything and it wasn't even something I did. I won't do it. So I'm shut down. We talk and he has been his old self on the phone. Counting the days until we can see each other for his leave, telling me he misses me and all the stuff I wanted to hear so badly a couple weeks ago and now I don't know how to respond. I know that I feel the same way. I love him with all my heart and soul and I want him to come home so bad so we can just be us again, but I can't let those feelings come out. I'm not going to lose it this time. I am not going to spend this year crying and being afraid. I'm doing exactly what he told me to do, but now he doesn't seem to like it, but I can't find the middle ground. I'm nervous about seeing him next month. I want him to know that I love him, but in all the times in the past when I would show it while he was away he would get mad, so I'm being perky and funny when we talk like we're old buds, I don't know what else to do.