Finally, my family is all together. Just the three of us, in our wonderful little home. The American dream.
For me, it truly is a dream. It’s the fulfillment of all my heart has desired for as long as I can remember. I used to pray to God and ask why I never got to be the girl in high school with friends, why it was never me grabbing gas station snacks with my girls after school. Why I never had dates on a Friday night. This morning, driving to work in my cute little truck with my cute little daughter, listening to all my favs from the 80’s. I understand that God had something so much better in store for me.
It wasn’t easy to get here, though. That’s what I’m here to write about. My blog started as a place to be honest and talk about my hurt, an outlet that I hoped could encourage somebody else. Well y’all know me, lately I feel like all my blogs have been answerless, sad reports. My problem is pride, I think.
I am a military wife. I married my husband when I was 20, knowing fully dang well what I was signing up for. In my heart, I felt like I was perfect for the job. I knew how to work hard, to get things done that needed done, I am a very capable young woman. I just assumed that was a huge part of the reason William married me. He knew I could handle being alone. So it feels like a failure if I ask for help, if I admit I’m not perfect and happy and great at getting everything done on my own. I think that’s pride.
Anyways, I really had a difficult time this deployment, but I didn’t even realize how hard it was until Billy got home. At first, I think I was in shock, like it couldn’t be real. It wasn’t until we were holding hands, and I was driving us to our house (that Billy would be seeing for the first time) that I just broke. I cried for two days after he got home. I was so relieved, it felt like I could breathe. Suddenly, I wasn’t carrying everything on my own.
My pregnancy was full of joy, don’t get me wrong, but it was also full of a quiet struggle. Just before my husband left, we found out we could buy a house here in Jax. The first half of deployment was full of looking at houses, feeling discouraged, sooooo many ups and downs. Yet, I put on my big girl boots, and trudged through it.
Then I moved into my house, and decided I hated it. It was so awful to come home from work every night and have to sleep in this house I hated. It was cold, and empty. I missed my small apartment. I miss the familiarity. I found mold in my hallway closet, and I really think that just did me in. After that, I just crumbled. I even had my parents worried about me, I was so miserable. The mold was surface level, my dad took care of it easily, but the paranoia, the fear, the restlessness. I was haunted by stress dreams… so worried about the health of my unborn baby, her future, what my husband would think.
I guess at the time I was drowning, and it just kinda felt normal, which makes it seem like I maybe wasn’t drowning. I heard a parable (is that the right term?) once that was like “if you throw a frog into boiling water, it will instantly hop out and save itself, but, if you put it in cool water and slowly bring it to a boil, the frog will cook itself to death and never even know”
In this scenario I think I was the frog slowly boiling myself to death. I didn’t even know what a hard time I was having until Billy got home. I took my first breath in nine months and the world didn’t collapse around me.
I did ask for, and accept help. I did not move to my new house on my own, and my parents came down to help me with getting my house turned into a home, as well as with the baby. I’m talking about a mental burden, though. Sometimes it feels like I’m spinning so fast, the only thing holding my life together is the centrical force. While William was gone, I kept telling myself (and others) that I had the easy job. I wasn’t missing out on buying our first house, on the magic of pregnancy, on the miracle of birth. My husband was, and honestly, he did have the harder job. I also realized though, that I don’t have to shoulder everything by myself.
I’ve had people tell me how good I am at being alone. Others have poked me with knives, telling me how easy it’s been for me. That’s on me though, because I’ve made it look that way. Part of me wants to maintain that, but I know that even if there is a mess in my life, that doesn’t diminish from the value that I bring to my marriage, to motherhood, to my career. My mom used to tell me that it was okay to cry, to let the mean kids know they were hurting me. In this case, there are no mean kids, but I’m allowed to, and I probably should, show that I’m hurting.
Alas, my family is whole. My husband is home, and this deployment has shaped me into a person I didn’t know was even a possibility. HUGE thank you to everybody who helped me, whether I asked for it or not. A special thanks to those who saw my need, and insisted on helping even when I resisted.
