Love

 Love,

    Time stands still some days. I feel like I'm doing all that I can to force the breath to move in and out of my lungs. I feel exhausted and conflicted and all over the map. I feel like every feeling is completely out of control so I exercise myself to the point of exhaustion, and I micromanage the things that I can in the juvenile hope that control will make me feel safe. Control will numb the sorrow.

    Did I mention that some days I wrap myself up in your clothes so that I don't feel like you're so far away? Some days I bury my face in your things hanging up in the closet and shut my eyes so tightly so that I can pretend you're standing there filling them. Some days I long for the physical presence of you that my arms, chest, and body physically aches. Dramatic, I know, but also true.

    We get on the phone and I can't find any words to say because how do I describe the storm in my spirit without making you feel guilty? How do I express how desperately I want you to be here without having to dive in to consequences and choices and decisions that have been intentionally made?

    From the moment I met you, the time spent without you feels like a vacuum of darkness. It feels like all of the best parts of me disappear and I'm left trying to figure out how to keep on truckin'. It's why I ran away the first time you deployed because this love that you've brought to my heart was so overwhelming and agonizing that it was easier to numb myself and shut it down. Except numbing ourselves to hurt always means numbing ourselves to joy.

    I am working on intentionally sitting in the aches that I want to avoid. Grounding myself in the pain so that I don't lose out on any of the sun drops of joy that abound. Looking at your face flooded my heart with so much light today. Feeling the butterflies in my stomach, the longing in my chest, and the many emotions that you wear on your face is a pleasure. Even if we aren't saying any words, sitting silently looking at each other through a phone camera while our children talk about driving, and dating, and college, and all of the things that are such big experiences, all I could do was smile. 

    Look at what we've made. Two broken-family kids, scared to pieces, desperate for the comfort that only the other can bring. We have four human beings who are utterly fantastic, and somehow we get to be a part of that. I look at them and I see you. I see the way you wear your emotions on your sleeve, the way you force yourself to do so.many.things that your heart doesn't want to. I see your endurance and your strength. I see the resilience of a man a million times stronger than I am, capable of holding me up while I learn how to put myself back together, and vulnerable enough to let me do the same for him. I see the way you carry patience like a warrior, understanding that God will make everything okay, even when nothing feels okay.

    You take my breath away. I am now, and have been since I met you, completely in awe of you, utterly yours. You have taught me what it is to feel, to stop numbing myself from the hurts and the harms, and I struggle to remember that when you're gone.

    Right now I'm wrapped up in your sweatshirt, looking at your picture, sitting in the joy and the sadness, the grief and the elation, that has come over the years. I can't wait until you're home.

Update.

 America,

It's been two months since America sent my favorite human being away. I don't think I would say I'm doing well. Times like these do not allow for wellness. One does not feel "well" when embarking on a marathon. Instead, the mind shifts to survival, endurance, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other... It's a constant fight to feel anything at all. There is so much pretending when one's husband is away. Our children need me to be "me." My husband needs me to keep everything running smoothly. My friends and family need me to fill the roles they've grown accustomed to. So I smile, I make a joke, I listen, I pretend. No one really wants to hear about the heartache, and even if they did, I don't know that I could muster up the energy or the confidence to define it. 

I am not disintegrating, but in every single moment of my day there is a hollowness that can not be erased or shared. There is no person on this earth who can help me process like he can. No one who understands what it's like to be in my head and my heart. There is no one who grasps the complicated set of feelings that I share regarding our daughter becoming an adult, our son's blindness and epilepsy, my own health issues, our other childrens' needs, our grief, our losses, our successes. He has seen me curled up in the fetal position screaming at God that HE CAN NOT TAKE THIS CHILD AWAY FROM ME and shutting down as my son lost his mind hours after my father died because of medication. He has seen me skinny and morbidly obese and every variation in between. He has held my hand while I cried and cried and he knows without any need for explanation that Mass is my safe place. Except he is also my safe place...

America, I miss him. I hope you understand that there are real families aching and sobbing this Father's Day away. I hope you grasp, when you read or talk about Ukraine or Russia or Europe, or anything war at all, that there is a real human being, with a real spouse, real children, real parents, on the other end of the grand statements of what we need to do. I hope you measure the cost and are willing for it to be you, your spouse, your child, your actual self. I don't pretend to know any answers, and I would not be so presumptive to think my voice holds any relevance on the subject of necessary (or unnecessary wars), I just ask for you to reflect on the ache, the cost, the hardship. It is more difficult than words could ever say. It hurts more than I could ever begin to describe to you. This year I will have celebrated our eighteenth anniversary, my fortieth birthday, our daughter's eighteenth birthday, our triplets' sixteenth birthdays, sicknesses, dog illnesses, major life transitions, all without him. That sucks.

Everything has a cost. Some days paying it really freaking sucks.

Letter to You

 It's Father's Day and we spoke for only a few minutes. There are moments in a marriage where one runs out of words. I miss the moments where touch could communicate everything I wanted to say to you. I miss not having to figure out the explosions in my mind, how to define them, and then releasing them from my mouth. I miss my heart racing, my pulse jumping, my breath catching, because you walked.in.the.door. I miss the way your eyes dance when you're laughing. I miss throwing my head back because you said or did something hilarious. I miss sitting next to each other on the couch. I miss feeling like our lives were moving forward. I hate living, while also being on pause. 

I'm tired.

Who are we in this next chapter? Who are we in this current one? Why does it all feel so confusing, boring, underwhelming, and overwhelming all at the same time? Why do I feel incapacitated, like I can't take a deep breath, because I don't get to see you every day? Why does love feel so unfair sometimes? Why am I so jealous of schools and hope and promise of the future? Who are we anymore, babe? What are we even doing here?

There was such a lengthy period of time where I could answer those questions with ease. Everything felt so clear and focused. I knew the point. I got the brief. We were in it to win it. Then I saw the shit show of the fallout. The decisions that have broken my heart into thousands of pieces and then poured salt in the gaping wounds. There are moments where I used to scream from the mountaintops, tell the stories as loudly as I could. I used to fight for the families, fight for the marriages, fight for the country to understand the reality behind it all. We are not the characters that are displayed on tv. We are so much more nuanced than that. I spent years fighting to make leaders understand what the experience was of the spouses and the kids, the girlfriends and the parents. I fought with all that I could to make everyone's voices heard. I fought until my heart was broken and bruised.

I want our children to understand that while the Army defines its backbone as the NCO, there's no soldier without their family. Period. There's no military fathers without the other half of the equation sitting back in America, while everyone barbeques, holding their crying children, putting on a happy face, hunkering down and just.getting.through.it. While simultaneously figuring out care packages, fighting to keep the connection alive via text, conversation, email, letter.

I'm so tired.

I feel so broken. I feel so drained. I feel exhausted and conflicted and unable to describe with any level of efficiency even the slightest element of how I feel. The minutes take forever to pass, and what has felt like a year has only been a couple of months. War is not for those who have seen too much of it. There's a necessary naivete. I feel angry when I hear people say We have to support this to save the world. I want to scream that they have exactly zero understanding of what that means, feels like, or looks like. Zero. I want to yell how easy it is to state when one's not sitting alone without their absolute favorite human being, for the seventh deployment, for the 102nd (and counting - adding in a separate tour, and not including training) month of sleepless, lonely nights. I'm the one sitting here trying to keep it all together waiting for the day when this current shit show will end and I will be able to take a deep breath and finally fall asleep.

I miss things making sense, then you get on facetime and I lay there staring at you, in the dark of our room, until the sound of your breath makes me fall asleep. I push my aching heart up against the imagination of what it feels like to be wrapped up in your embrace. I slow my breathing and go to the moments where you're hand is interlocked with mine, and everything feels simple and calm. I miss you.

The experience of letting go

Unwrapping my fingers from yours, relaxing my arms and letting them drop to my sides, and standing there frozen in this moment watching you walk away. My feet are cemented to the ground. My heart is breaking. I drop my sunglasses down over my eyes. I don't like to cry. I don't like for people to see me cry. I don't like feeling so desperate.

You walk over to get in the formation that will lead you away from me. I do everything in my power to keep my mind focused and sharp. I want to remember you. I want to remember your smell, your smile, your laugh. I want to remember the feel of your scruffy cheeks in the morning before you shave. I want to remember the sound of your breathing at night. I want to remember...

Always in the back of the conversation in my mind is what if? It's an endless dialogue that will keep me company for the next year. It will plague my dreams and my thoughts. It will haunt me every time the doorbell rings unexpectedly. It will be the thoughts that pop up late at night when the kids are asleep and the house is quiet.

My ears will hunger for the sound of the garage door opening at the end of the duty day. My eyes will search for you in the sea of uniforms that surround me. Your car will shock my heart every time I pull up to our house and see it, because for a split second I will forget that you're over there and not sitting at home in our living room.

Our children will react the only way that children know how. They will be angry, out of control, emotional and they won't really understand the whole process of grief. I hate that they are learning this at such young ages.

The world will go on even though my entire world is frozen in time. People will laugh and be silly and I will feel like laughing is a betrayal and any moment that could be special is missing the majority of the equation. I will write. I will write until my hands can't move. I will do everything possible to make sure you feel included.

My phone will become my only connection to you. I will love this and hate it at the same time.

You are marching out now and I'm running as fast as I can to my car so I can be at the airfield before you and wave you in. My final goodbye. My last eye-to-eye glimpse of you. It will now be skype... the lifeline.

Somehow I have to get in my car and drive home. Somehow I have to walk in to that house with your stuff, your ghost, your memory and face those children who are all aching and hurting and give them comfort. Some how I have to get through this because they need me, and you need me, and this is what I'm supposed to do. Somehow I am going to make it through the next minute, even though it feels like my life is over. Somehow I'm going to endure this year even though in this specific moment, I feel like I. can't. breathe. Somehow...

I'll sit here in this garage waiting until the sobs stop. I'll sit here waiting until I can breathe again. I'll find the will to begin this life without you here. I'll get through the agony that I can't describe. And one day, God willing, I will wake up and this will be over.