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.

 When we were young, our relationship was filled with emotional extremes. You and I were dramatic. We felt everything as if it was Mount Everest. We were big, bold, intense, passionate. We were all-in. When I reflect on the way I feel about this current deployment, I am surprised by the lack of extremes. This morning I woke up and ached for you, but it was not the ache that I would have expressed twenty years ago. It was deeper, slower, more quiet and still. I suppose I would describe it as more of a hollow sense. 

Last night as I lay in bed on the phone with you, we both went silent. You and I were drained from our very different experiences. Instead of filling the moments with words we just breathed. In that moment I closed my eyes and pretended that you were not on the other side of the planet. I pretended that this is not what it currently is. Maybe that's why I woke up feeling so hollow.

Since you have been gone, I have been struck by my difficulty to find words. Words are what I do, they're kind of my thing, and living these moments without you feels difficult to define. Gone are the extreme emotions that I have grown accustomed to in regards to deployment, here are these empty, drained, quiet ones that I don't particularly care for. What is there to say that has not already been said in spades?

You are my best friend. That phrase is thrown around so flippantly in our society, yet for me, it encompasses a degree of loyalty that is not common in our age. I have followed you, loved you, ached for you, supported you, and been united to you for so many years that I don't really know what the world without you means to me. Empty. 

I sit in Mass and struggle to even know what to pray. Normally, my heart and my brain are overwhelmed by communication. I often have to work hard to slow everything down and concentrate what is in front of me. Lately, it's silence. In an eerie way. I struggle to be present at all, though my body is sitting there. I feel disconnected and disengaged. I feel as if I have nothing to say. I find some solace that there are periods where silence is vital. 

Everything feels so different, Love. I don't recognize the world this way. So I sit in this quiet, feeling this sense of silence and hollowness. I wish we were together.

Anniversary

We celebrated our eighteenth wedding anniversary yesterday. He is one side of the planet; I am on the other. When I look up at the sky, he sees the moon and I see the sun. This time in our lives is unique to say the least. We have been together for so long that I cannot recall what or who I was before he arrived. When I reflect back on that period of my life, it is cloudy and vague. Not that he made my life begin, but more that it was a shadow, and a preparation, for what is now.

We have so many different opinions about war and the military in this country right now. I look at my fellow citizens and see people looking for heroes and villains. So much is painted as black and white, hard and easy, good and bad, fair and unfair, etc. I look at this deployment with both fresh eyes and the heart of someone who has walked this road an abundance of times. I feel simultaneously achy and sore, unwilling and broken, but also grateful. It's like the moments after something life changing occurs. Everything moves in slow motion. Your senses become more aware; your brain chemistry changes. You are present but also strangely removed, as if you are watching yourself navigate the world around you.

My Love is someone who can destroy me. His ambivalence, his distracted self, his focus on what is in front of him and lack of privacy to pour his heart out to me feels like the slow motion of lava flowing out of a volcano. It's a path of red hot, slow-moving energy that eats my sense of joy and leaves darkness in its wake. Writing that feels pathetic in our modern era of female power. I am my own individual. I am also his wife. There is no way to separate the two senses of myself. 

In the same light, I have moments of overwhelming grief, where the hardened lava of my heart breaks down and crumbles. I have moments where the most random situation will send me across the world to the side of the person who helps me to sleep, makes me laugh, and brightens up the darkness in my heart like no other person on this planet can. I want to be stronger than I feel. I want to be resilient and calm, pouring out peace on those around me. 

For eighteen years he and I have held hands and walked through the world with the same last name. We have navigated so many hardships that nearly ripped us to pieces. We have seen each other at our absolute worst and have helped each other achieve our best. We have fought like hell. We have laughed even harder. We have loved with fists closed so tight around our own will and determination to survive. We have no illusions that disintegration is around every corner. Marriage is hard... but it can be such a beautiful joy, a delight to the soul. It can keep you going when the lava seeks to turn you to stone. 

May God give us strength to weather this time apart. 

Ache

 Last night I couldn't sleep. I laid in bed for hours, waiting for the night to tick away. The physical element of your absence is immense. My body aches for yours to be next to me. It lays awake, waiting for the feel of you to lull it to sleep and there are moments where it just isn't possible to ignore it. I was exhausted, but my soul was aching and searching for what I knew would not arrive.

Sometimes I feel hollow, love. I wonder what the purpose is to my days. I am probably far too wrapped up in you, yet I am not apologetic about it. My days are divided by the presence and absence of you. When you are gone there is no division. Hours, days, weeks, months blur together in a giant glob of relentless ache. I feel incomplete. What will I do when you die? 

War is a young man's game. It's a phrase that I've heard you say recently. I relate so deeply. I observe and see how this is playing out and find myself saying so many times I'm too old for this. Even with that perspective, I'm simultaneously grateful. Missing you, longing for you, recognizing the great contribution that you bring to my heart and my days is a privilege that is not lost on me. Too many people get lost in the monotony of marriage and they lose track of the way that love is like wind. Powerful, life changing, impossible to define beyond its impact on the world. You are my wind. You move me, sway me, impact me, yet I can't see you. You hold me prisoner when I'm lying awake waiting for the hours to tick away and the day to come. 

I miss you.

Seven

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.

Again

 There are moments where silence is necessary. I have to keep my mouth shut because I know too much or it's not the appropriate time. There are decisions that are made that have lasting and permanent impacts on our family. The heart aches, so it prays. It spreads all of the gossip and the rumors and the anger and fear and sadness and angst to the only One who understands all of it and has seen it at its completion, even as it is currently ongoing.

What is happening in our world, is going to impact us all. Our nuclear entity that I wear around like a comfortable pair of old jeans, and a worn and tattered sweatshirt, is being altered. You four, alone, understand what it is to watch me let him go. You four, alone, understand what it is to have him gone. We five alone know what it is to walk this road... Hypotheticals are so much easier than realities. Aren't they? Why is it always that way?

I am afraid of what the world looks like without him in it. I understand that is true for all of us. I know that you know he is the other half of me, more clearly than any other human beings on this planet. I don't know what I look like as a human, a mother, and woman without him. Some people might say that's pathetic, but I say that's what being "all-in" looks like. There's no me without him, there's no Joneses minus him. 

It has always been my goal and intention to be honest with you. I have intentionally displayed the full range of my personality. I am scared. I'm afraid that he won't come home. I know his experience, understanding, and wisdom are what would be most beneficial to the lives entrusted to him. He's unique in his vast amount of experience in war. These are the treasures I will do my best to hold on to come what may.

May God have mercy. May He grant us strength to walk the path He has selected for us. May we be gracious, forgiving, and gentle. May our countenance be of such a manner than no one could look at us and fail to see the Savior who holds our hearts, lives, and comfort in His hands. 

Lolly

 Lolly,

I cried myself awake this morning. I know that reads dramatically, but it's the simple truth. I was asleep, and I woke up crying. I don't understand where the time as gone. I have rooted myself in every moment, prevented myself from that perspective of I can't wait for you to grow up. I have purposefully treasured every single day with you, knowing that one day I would long for them. This morning I woke up in a panic thinking about you going away to college. It's the flip side to the coin of growing up, that as a young adult I had zero concept of (to be fair, perhaps it was not something my mother ached about). The idea of you being states away, or even houses away, hurts.like.hell.

I sat there in the kitchen while you cried about the fear of it. I sat there, reassured you, reminded you of your capabilities, and I remembered how scary and difficult it was to unlatch myself from my own family and move away to school. I told you that you are brave, strong, and full of might. I told you it's okay to be scared, but that your moments will be filled with adventure, and you will make new memories. All of these things are true. You are so brave, so intelligent, so courageous. You will make yourself do what you must. I admire you.

I have treasured every single moment of being your Mommy. I loved the very early days, when you refused to sleep if it wasn't right next to me or your Daddy. I loved the nights of getting up to feed you, change you, and put you back to sleep. I loved watching you discover light, water, and books. I loved reading the same stories to you over and over again, changing them every so often just to give myself something new. I loved that despite you having every single word of those books memorized, you never minded when I did that (though you protested loudly if your Dad did. HAHA). I loved being there when you walked, laughed, talked, fed yourself, learned to use the toilet, lost your first tooth, felt your first heartbreak, made your first friend, first auditions, first challenges, firsts...

I know that in your immense sensibility, there is a strong possibility that you will go the community college route before transferring into a four-year program. I love how deeply you think about the future. I appreciate that you don't get annoyed every time I remind you to keep an open mind, and that God will provide what you need for the place He wants you to go. 

All of this, does not erase the very real emotional agony of me having to push you, encourage you, and help you to leave. The simple truth is, I don't want you to. I want you to stay here so that I can selfishly share life with you. I want to hear about all of your experiences and moments. I want to see you every single day, so that we can talk about politics and religion and current events. I want to be a part of the moments of your life: friends, romance, etc. I selfishly want to go to sleep at night knowing you're in the room next door, not worrying about whether or not some monster has assaulted you or hurt you. I don't want to walk through this first for myself: having a child move out.

There are no books or manuals or anythings that I have ever read that assist a mother in navigating this chapter. When you were placed in my soul, no one taught me how to find peace and comfort with the next chapter. No one prepares you for this moment, they just tell you that it will come and you'll miss what was. This is new territory for me. I will do my best to be strong for you. I will work hard to be encouraging. Forgive me for the mistakes I will inevitably make as this transition heads our way. Be merciful. Thank you for being such a fantastic human being so that this is such a challenge. 

I love you with all of my breath, and every one of my heart beats.