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.
The conversations have already begun to be distant. He already isn't the man that left just a week ago. The Army prepares the soldiers to become soldiers. They make them into someone else so that they concentrate on the job ahead of them. They leave who they are behind and they go as another entity.
We don't.
We remain. We are still home. We are still doing everything we used to do. We still get up every morning to the same pattern and we remain the same. But we are missing a piece of our lives. They aren't missing anything in this new life of theirs. I know they have to survive and I would give them any tools they needed to do so, but how do our hearts and emotions survive this. I want him to miss me and I really want to hear some emotion in his voice when he tells me he loves me. I have had a dream almost every night this past week that we were splitting up. While I may go on my day to day activities, and I have been busy, I guess this fear still sits in my gut until I go to sleep and then it lets me know it hasn't released me.
I saw a soldier in the store yesterday and I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to see my husband's face when he turned around. I wanted it to be some horrible mistake that I thought he was gone, but that he was really home and everything was ok. But it wasn't his face and I my heart sank. I have a hard time looking at couples holding hands or doing something silly like he and I used to do. A friend reminded me that it has only been a week and things will get better with time. But will it? Will it hurt less when he calls and inside I am screaming for some show of love but on the outside stay strong? Will it be ok when we don't talk for weeks and I'm wondering if it's because he doesn't want to or can't?
My hope is that I can look back at this blog a year from now and be able to say that I have learned something about myself. I hope I can say that I am stronger because of it. I hope I can put an end to this chapter and find myself ready to start a new life with my husband by my side. I guess my biggest fear is that that won't happen.
Out of all the emotions I should be feeling, why am I feeling angry? Why is everything that bugged me about him before coming to the surface and bugging me now. This is when I should be bending over backwards to show him how much I love him. The other night he called to ask when my birthday was. I felt so valued. Insert sarcastic sound here. I know everything about him and he can't even remember when my birthday is? Anyway, I was really sick to my stomach that night and I had to go, like immediately, so after answering his question I said I really don't feel good and I have to let you go. So he starts about how I don't want to talk to him. I explained that I wasn't feeling good and he actually said so you are admitting you don't want to talk to me. I told him he could call me back, but I really had to go right now and I love him. He mumbled it back and hung up. I haven't talked to him since. So I've been asking myself why I bend over backwards to get him everything he could possibly need or want and show him I love him and how much he means to me and he can't understand that I was sick. He never even called to make sure I was ok. It really hurts that I will be putting my whole life on hold for someone who doesn't seem to really care all that much unless I'm not meeting his needs. And I'm angry that I feel like this because I do love him and I'm scared and I miss him and I hate that all that has to be marred by feelings of guilt. I give up.
Wow, so much has happened over the last few days. He left very early Sunday morning. I took him to the armory around midnight Saturday night. It was so weird. Trying to think of something to say that would truly represent what I was feeling about him and the next year and every emotion I could lump into one phrase. But I couldn't. All I could do was hug him and try to remember how his arms felt around me. How his lips felt against mine and try to committ that to my memory for the next year. Then we said "See ya later...." and I watched him walk into the armory. And I got in the car and drove away.
All the emotions came over me and I sobbed while I drove home. Then I walked into the house and his work boots were sitting next to the bed and his jeans with the belt still in them that he was just wearing a few hours ago hung on the closet hook and I the strangest feeling hit me that he would be home in a few hours. He really wasn't leaving for a year. And then the deepest sadness I have ever felt hit my stomach and my chest and I felt I had just lost my best friend.
So far, I have left the jeans and the boots where they are and his basket full of clean laundry that is by his dresser. I just can't let it go yet. As much as I want to clean, I just want things to remain the way that they were when he left. This has been much harder than I thought it would be. I thought after a few weeks is when it would hit me because I was used to him being gone that long, but it's already the hardest thing I've have felt.
We had the deployment ceremony yesterday. It was gutwrenching, but at the same time I felt less alone. As I was trying to hide my own tears I looked around and watched them fall around me. Children, moms & dads, wives, girlfriends, friends and I realized that I'm not abnormal for how I've been feeling, as much as he tries to make me think I am. A kid sitting next to me said "deployment sucks". Well, doesn't that sum it up. Nothing could be added to that, I could only agree.
So here we are at the end of a years worth of prep. Now the emotions are higher and now I'm mad. I'm mad that he can walk around and not seem to care that he's going. Ok, protect yourself, protect me whatever, but I need to know you love me. I need to know that waiting here for a year in constant anxiety will be worth it when you get home. That you want to get home to me. Any sign.....anything?
But no. We lose our husbands before they even go. Who will they be when they come back? Who will we be? Is it wrong to want to talk instead of watch tv? Is it wrong to just want to hold each other until we go to sleep? Is it wrong to want to love you?
It will soon be here. That final hug. The final look. The final kiss. The final drive home alone.
Yes, you read that title correctly. I found out last night that the last weekend I thought we would have, we won't have. I can't take one more thing. Everything gets taken away. Everything has changed a thousand times. Just grin and bear it, Kim. You don't matter one bit.
I just want it to be over, this up and down. I want it to begin so my only concern can be that I miss him and wondering how he is doing. I feel like I'm fighting a battle alone against enemies that keep changing so they are always fresh. They never tire of the game that is making my insides raw. I had to leave the house last night so I could go to the river and sit in my car and cry. A real, rip it out of my guts cry. Because I'm sick of hiding aroung the house trying to be ok so that he doesn't get upset. I'm sick of being what everyone else needs. I'm sick of the stupid things people say to you that's supposed to make it all better. I'm sick of pretending that I'm ok. I'm sick of being awake!
This is a raw post and for that I apologize, but I have to say that this is the hardest thing I have ever had to do and the hardest part hasn't even happened yet. I felt like someone was sitting on my chest last night. I couldn't breath and yet I wanted to scream. I wanted to not love him so it wouldn't matter. I wanted to pretend that this doesn't have anything to do with me and that it doesn't hurt. I don't know what to do with myself. My thoughts bang in my head and my heart feels like it will explode. I hate this. I hate all of this. With every fiber of my being I wish that he didn't need to be a soldier. That he didn't volunteer to do this because the other guys were going and they are brothers. I wish I mattered more to him that he wouldn't have wanted to go. I wish I would have never loved a soldier.
But I did. I do. I love him more than I have ever loved another. Yet, I look at him and wonder, what is so special about this man that makes me want to stop all life around us for just one look from him. One moment with him that matters. One anything with him. Does he feel that way about me? I have no idea. He can't show much emotion right now and that is its own bitter arrow in my heart. When he tells me that he will always be here for me, it mocks me. It actually hurts because I want to scream back at him, "No, you won't be. You chose to leave me. You chose someone else was more important that us. You chose the war over our relationship." But I can't scream any of that stuff. It matters only to me. It hurts only me. It is the pain that I carry in my rucksack, and now I'm starting my 400 day march.
Meltdown......total and complete. Last night I found out I will be going to the ceremony by myself because they need him to be on duty. Ok, so all the other families get to go with their soldier, but not me. Is this what military life will always be about? Just take it, keep your mouth shut, there's nothing you can do.
He told me my eyes were filled with dispair last night. I give up.
We spent a wonderful weekend together, just the two of us. It was perfect in every way. We really are best friends, even if we didn't get the extra special gift of loving each other. He's even starting to take a moment to tell me how much he loves me. He said he isn't looking forward to saying goodbye. Me either. I haven't cried in front of him this week and I hope not to during this week. He knows how deeply I love him and how hard this is so why make it harder on him? I need to show him that I'm ok and that I will be fine while he is gone. All he needs to do is come back home to me.
I'm off of work on the 21st and that's probably the day I will let all this stress go and have a hot bubble bath and a good cry.
Ok, as some of you may have noticed I changed the design of my blog. Instead of the black forboding look, I went into more natural colors. I did have a reason for it and it wasn't just to play, although I am a computer nerd at heart and I do enjoy learning new stuff.
Anyway, I did it because I felt as though I should begin anew. I re-read a lot of my posts and realized how whiny and weak they sounded. I don't regret posting them because those thoughts are truly how I felt at the time and I wanted to be as raw as I can be on this blog. What I do regret is that I didn't immediately have the inner strength I thought I would have. I regret that I moved my house to a sand foundation.
What I hope to accomplish this year that he is gone is a better sense of myself. More confidence, more backbone, more strength, a bigger set!!!! I hope to be able to look back and mock myself for how weak I ONCE was and am now no longer.
All those feelings I talked about are real. I will miss him. I will worry about him. I will get upset because he isn't in bed beside me. I will want to rage when something amazing happens and he isn't there to share it with. I will be bitter when I need a hug and there's no one there to give it to me. But all those things can't be helped, but they can be dealt with better. I can be stronger than I have been and I will be. Stay tuned and hold me accountable when I falter. I welcome all your advice and comments. And for everyone of you that have reached out to me to encourage me or just share the moment with me, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You all offer something to me that is unique in it's own way and something that I will always keep with me during this time. We are not alone. We will survive. We will thrive.
You may have read the title and thought....huh? Then again, those of you familiar with the military way of doing things may not even give it a passing thought. I'm happy that we have a few more days together, especially since they are weekend days and we can actually hang out. Yet somehow I think we won't be hanging out in a comfy way. We'll probably be running around packing the last minute things trying not to get on each other's nerves, I'll shut down and then he'll realize I'm not talking anymore and try to apologize and I'll give him the it's ok smile when really my insides are seizing. I wonder if they know how much we are feeling inside that we can't let out. I wonder how much they are feeling but won't let out. He's already in the "it's just a job" mode and he has to do his job. No emotion to it, nothing to let me know that this affects him too. Inside though, I feel a little dead. Maybe everything has finally spilled over and hit the shut off valve.
I had a great talk with my daughter last night. She's 8 and I thought that she and my son didn't really understand the full impact of Scrapper being gone for a whole year. He's gone away for a few weeks, which seems long to them, but he's always come home. I didn't think they realized what this was meaning. But last night my daughter said that she worries about him leaving and how she's scared that something will happen to him and how sad I'm going to be because I just married him and it's really not fair that he has to leave. She said she didn't want to say anything to me because she didn't want me to be sad about it. So, now I know that my kids do understand and they are trying to protect me.
8 days left....tick tock, tick, tick, tick......
So today I decided to give my husband a blog name. I have read other blogs and the wives have a nickname for their hubby so it came to me today, like a smell that reminds you of something familiar.
His name forevermore shall be Scrapper.
As you scream for the answer of why.....let me tell you. Settle down in front. Ok. My husband is not a big guy, BUT for the love all that is unholy, DO NOT MESS WITH HIM!!!!!!! He cracks me up sometimes with his stories of fighting with this guy or that guy and honestly, I kind of thought that he was telling me the stories to impress me. Well, when I was at the armory for the blessed FRG event, this guy came up to him to ask about a formation and he honestly looked scared to talk to my husband. My husband????? He's a big loveable goofball. Of course, I won't let out that little secret to "the guys". But really, it was a bit of amusement for the day. Especially, considering my impression of him before we started dating. I'll tell that story one day on the blog, when I need to reminisce a little while he's gone. I love the story and I love my little Scrapper!!!!
I can't help it, it makes me smile every time I write it.
Nine days left until "the day". It doesn't quite seem real yet, like someone is going to pop up and say "ha! I got ya". I don't think I'm grasping all of this anymore. I'm kind of on autopilot. There is so much do on top of regular life that I don't know what I'm feeling. He's gone today for just an overnight trip for supplies and I'm almost looking forward to a night alone. How messed up is that????? He's leaving next week and I want a night alone?!?!??!? What is wrong with me?
I have been diligent in reading about other couples who are dealing with a deployment and how they ended up fighting all the time before he left because the tension was just so high. I would read those while sitting on my soapbox thinking, we won't do that because we love each so much and we won't want to waste any time with fighting.
STUPID!!!!!
There, I said it for you. Yes, I thought I could make things ok as long as I prepared the best I could for all that was to happen.
WRONG!!!!!
We have fought, I have cried, he has shut down and together we are miserable. We are polar opposites. I want to be closer to him before he goes. To hold on to our memories and make a few more before he leaves. To be the couple that we were when we decided our lives wouldn't be the same without the other. To hold on to something that just isn't there anymore. And he is shutting down. Closing off from what he probably feels will hurt him in the long run. Me. The kids and our lives together.
Part of me says fight for it, keep working on it, keep letting him know that you love him so much. But the rest of me is just so tired. Emotionally, I'm drained. I'm exhausted. I walk around with this crushing feeling in my chest every day now, and I don't know how to fight for something when the other person is just so far away, emotionally. Do I think he loves me? Yes, but I don't think he can show me the way I desperately need him to right now. Should I be more understanding? Yes, I think I should be and I do try to understand, but it hurts so bad when you want to be closer to someone because you love them and they won't allow it for whatever reason.
How do you not break during this time?
I will, at times, suddenly get tears in my eyes and want to curl up and disappear from everyone and just cry as hard and as long as I can. But I don't. I do take moments during my shower when I will just let the tears fall amidst the water, but even then I have to be careful becaues we have reached that comfortable place in our marriage that he feels he can use the bathroom while I'm in there either showering or doing my hair or makeup. The jury is still out on that one from me, but I digress.
In three weeks I will have to say goodbye. I don't have a choice and I don't have an option of feeling anything about it at this point. It is going to happen regardless. He will start talking about deployment stuff and I find myself drifting off where before every word out of his mouth was like water to a desert nomad. I just don't want to get near it. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to plan it. I don't want to figure out what we are going to do. I don't want to know what I have to do in case something happens to him. I don't want to cry anymore.
But I do.
I cry everyday in my own silent way because the only man I have ever truly loved is leaving and I don't know if I will ever see him again. And no I'm not thinking about him not coming home to me physically, but what frightens me more is him coming home but never being him again. My dreams for the future all had him there....him, the man he is. What if he doesn't want our life anymore when he gets home? What if he suffered so much that he will never be able to love again or be loved? There are those that would say to not think of such things, but I am a realist. And realistically, those things could happen.
How am I going to say goodbye?
God, let him be ok. Bring him home to me at the end of this year of hell. I'll do anything, just bring him back. I know I'm selfish when so many other wives and family members are experiencing the same thing and those of them who aren't going to have them come home, but God please help us all get through this. If it can't end, then please make time go by faster. Make the nights shorter so I won't have to lay awake in our bed wondering where he is and if he's ok. Make my heart like steel so it won't hurt while he's gone. Freeze my tears and don't let them fall until I'm safe in his arms again. But God, if you have to ignore me during this year so that you can stay by his side, then I will find a way. Just bring him home again.