Marriage is a process of habitualization. It’s small actions, happening every day, until they are so engrained in you that you don’t recognize their existence at all, until they’re gone. Marriage is presented as non-habit-forming, but time and years have shown that to be a lie. I am an addict, I am HIS addict, and here I sit without him.
The Army comes with all sorts of degrees of challenges and heartaches. It has served up, on a platter, multiple instances of ripping my most prized relationship away from me, leaving me sobbing, aching, empty. It has forced me to unwrap my fingers from his, my arms from his, my sleep, my laughter, our moments from him and in its wake is a hollowness that is damned near impossible to define.
Lucky number seven came with all of its fury. It came in an unexpected manner, yet its wound is no less significant. The scars from the previous six are etched across my mind and body. My soul moves with the bumps of their presence, reminding me that nothing is permanent, everything changes, this too will one day end. Cherish every single second.
Never take the moments where they hold your hand for granted. Don’t stop celebrating that they make you coffee every morning, or wrap themselves around you when you are cold. Don’t stop being grateful that they always put the toilet seat down, or stop delighting in the way they sound just before they fall asleep. Never take for granted how much you enjoy folding their laundry and putting away their shoes for the umpteenth time. Never stop noticing how your flesh was made to perfectly mold into them, and how in that embrace you fall asleep every.single.time. Never stop falling apart in their presence, or believing them when they tell you that you are capable and strong and good. Never take a single moment for granted because it’s the habits, the every day moments, that rip you to shreds when the ghost of them is all you have to hold on to.
He is my heartbeat. Unwrapping my arms from him hurts like hell.
