My new husband and I are no strangers to time apart. His job in construction keeps him occupied Monday-Saturday for as long as the weather allows them to work in whatever city needs new roads. The phone calls are lack-lustered with the exhaustion of the days labor pulling his eyes closed. The Sundays together are filled with chores: laundry, grocery shopping, resting, and cleaning. The hardest weeks are when he has to come home on Thursday night, leave Friday morning at the crack of dawn, drill Friday-Sunday, and come back home Sunday night, up on Monday morning to work in another city for another job.
This lifestyle has been good practice for us in preparation for deployment. I hear about women who can’t spend one night apart from their husbands, and I can’t help but think of what kind of alternate reality universe they’re living in. I don’t pity them for one second.
I have been forced to gain self-confidence, self-assurance, and an independence that I never had before I met Josh.
Hobbies have saved me from pure insanity. Volleyball, bartending, running, and lifting have all been my sanctuaries that I run to when I’m lonely or depressed. I’ve learned that I can’t stay home in my small apartment and hide from the world while watching an absurd amount of Hulu. My cell phone can’t fill the void that my husband has in my heart. I have created these positive and active hobbies so I don’t sit in my dark valley for too long – staring in the blue light of my cell phone wishing for a text message or a phone call.
Getting out into the real world is the only cure to pass the time. I’ve always struggled with finding my ‘tribe’, but it was essential to find good people to share life with – all the good and bad.
Deployment is looming in our future. I’ll keep my blog updated throughout this whole process. Three months until he goes back to work, and five months until Deployment – counting down. I’m hoping to use this space as a release of all of the good and bad, the pretty and the ugly, the crazy and the logical.
The Raven Girl 