One Year Ago...

How does one really measure a year?

People can state that it starts January 1st and ends December 31st. That it is exactly 12 months long. Or 52 weeks. Or 365 days. Or 8,760 hours. Or 525,600 minutes. Or 31,536,000 seconds.

But what does all of that really mean? What if you turned 1 year into 5,256,000 breaths. Or 20,075 laughs. Or 37,843,200 heartbeats. Or 104 periods of crying. Or 5,475 hugs. Or 5,110 kisses. Or started it on February 4th and ended it on February 3rd?

Now imagine all those moments listed above happening -- And now suddenly take them away. For one whole year you must go without kissing or hugging your spouse. You won't be able to lay your head upon their chest and listen to their heart beat during that year. The time you get to hear them laugh or cry or just hear them breathe will be limited. Only over the phone or webcam will you get to hear them crying, or laughing, or just sitting there and breathing.

As far as seeing them goes, that is very limited as well. Yes, the internet can do wondrous things now. You can bring a whole new world in through your computer. Webcams have helped do that and will help bring your spouse's face to you from half a world away... But it is still not the same. It is dirty and pixelated, and even though you try, you cannot make out that small birth mark that you know is there at their right temple. More often than not, the webcam and internet die and you are left staring at a black screen and listening to silence. But even when that happens, you revel in the brief moment when you two were almost in the same room together... Then you use up one of your 104 periods of crying...

Today marks exactly 1 year for me. 52 weeks ago I had to watch my newly wedded husband step onto a bus and drive away. He had to leave me standing on a sidewalk while he went onto a plane and flew to a distant country to fight for our freedoms. To protect all of us. During this past year I have cried more than 104 times, I have felt my heartbeat for my husband, I felt my breathe catch when I learned that his truck had been hit by an IED, I have laughed with him over the phone at old inside jokes and antics around his place of work, I have hugged his pillow late into the night wishing it was him, and I have blown all my kisses to him over webcams, phones, and to the night sky.

Through this period I have grown in more ways that I can count. I have become a stronger woman, an independent woman. One who has learned something that only this experience could teach. Yes, there are women who live alone and have grown and are stronger for it, but it is a very different kind of alone when you are married to the military and you have to be separated. During that separation, you are not truly alone. You live like you are, yet you are constantly worrying about your spouse who is in harms way every single minute of every single day. And yet you can't worry. If you worried about them, you would go mad, and nothing would get accomplished. You grow and you learn to cope with this constant nagging and worry in your mind and heart. You learn to not panic every time the doorbell rings, hoping and praying to God that it is not two uniformed soldiers standing there, waiting to give you the news that you fear every day. The news that your soldier isn't coming home. You learn to put on a brave face and smile, even when all you want to do is cry and cry and cry -- just cry until there are no tears left, and then keep crying. You quickly adapt to a new place and make new friends. They are usually other spouses who are going through the same things you are, for they are truly the only people that know what you are experiencing and how you are feeling.

One of the hardest thing you learn is that it is okay to leave the house or to forget your cellphone. The single lifeline that you have to your spouse is your phone. Even though it is not your desire, missed calls do happen. When they do, you learn that it is not the end of the world, though it may feel like it at the moment. Usually they end up as sweet voicemails that you can play over and over again, especially when laying in bed getting ready to fall asleep. Yet the tears do fall when you learned about a missed call, you must have faith and confidence that they will call back. Though it is hard, you must not treat every phone call as if it were your last. It is alright to get frustrated and vent about things or even argue. It is healthy though to resolve the situation and end the conversation on a happy note, usually with a ton of "I love you"'s thrown back and forth. The frustrated arguing can be diminished by not bottling everything up inside and not keeping it from your military spouse. They are still a part of your life, even though they are not home. They worry about you just as much as you worry about them.

I know that I am not alone in experiencing this time apart. I dedicate this post to the military spouses, the children, the families and friends who have or will experience this. No matter how long your time apart must be, live in the knowledge that you have the most precious thing keeping you together. Love. Love and pride get you through the toughest periods of deployments, but the greatest of these is love.

This year has definitely taught me a lot. I am thankful for the experiences I have gone through and I am happy with how I have grown. The relationship I have with my husband has also grown, all for the better in many many ways. Yet, even though I am happy with my experiences, I am ready to have this year be over and done with.

I am currently at day 365 of this deployment... and I am still counting.
All the while praying for a safe return for my husband while I count down the days.

New Direction

So, I started this blog back when my husband left for his deployment in February of 2010. I wanted to document what it was like being a military spouse and being away from the one you love. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that a military spouses life can be very boring.
This past year, I spent most of it working at my restaurant job, sleeping, feeling depressed, and writing in a personal journal. I had an urge to write that on here, to send it out into the abyss that is the internet, but I was too scared of what people might think. Whether they would see it as heartbreaking or if I was just complaining too much. In the end, I decided to keep the journal private and only share it with my husband.

In only a handful of days, I will get to be held by my husband again. February marks the month that he left and the month that he will be returning! With that said, I need to start to come up with something new to blog about. Something that I really do want to write about everyday, something that I look forward to writing about. Hopefully inspiration will strike in the next few days. I don't want to leave a huge gap like I did with my last entry... where I stated that I was going to blog everything again. Wish me luck on getting inspired. Thank you.