April 20th

The Army through a curve ball at us today. They gave us a date. A date that will change our life for a little while. I knew it was coming, but it seemed like a much easier pill to swallow when I just had a time frame. April 20th. The day my Husband deploys for the second time.

We have been through this before. Last time it was so simple. I was in my junior-senior year of college, living with great friends, and only an hour away from my family. This time it is completely different. I'm now living in a city where I know just a handful of people outside of work, and I am 285 miles away from my family. I am much more dependent on Blake now than I have ever been before. And now they are taking him away from me. For a whole flippin' year!

Everything will be different this time. EVERYTHING. I'll have to do it all on my own: pay the bills, take out the trash, do the laundry, grocery shop, clean the house, get the mail, load AND unload the dishwasher, and just about anything else that comes along with keeping up a household. I'm not ready. Blake does more than his fair share of work around here. We've split up our chores fairly equally, and he's actually pretty good about keeping up his part of the deal. I'm not ready to have to do it all.

And then there's the food thing. Blake cooks for me. I get home around 9 at night on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights. Blake always has dinner ready for me. (He's actually a really great chef.) Now, I am going to have to be responsible for feeding myself. I have a feeling I'm either going to starve to death, or I'll live off a diet consisting of McDonalds.

We have been married for a little over 7 months, but now I feel like we are getting ready to go back to day 1 in our marriage. We'll have to learn how to make a marriage work when we're 7,000+ miles apart. Our first year of marriage has not been too difficult. The first few weeks were a bit rocky while we learned how to adjust to each other, but after we had worked out the kinks, we really started to enjoy being married. Now we have to learn how to do marriage again. We have to learn how to communicate, how to be independent and dependent at the same time, how to trust when you have no clue what is going on in your spouses life, and the list continues.

To be honest, I am not looking forward to this period in our life. I talked the other day about enjoying each period of our life, but I'm having a hard time imagining how I'm going to enjoy this part of our life. Blake and I have always been able to be flexible in our relationship. That is what kept us together through all the difficult times in our relationship. I have no doubt that we will adapt to this situation, but I am just scared. Change always brings around a little bit of fear, and I am no different.

I don't want things to change. I want Blake to stay here. I want to be able to celebrate our 1st anniversary together. I'm trying to see the positives in this situation though. We get a unique opportunity to see our marriage take on a new role. Our relationship grew by leaps and bounds during his last deployment. I don't know if we would be where we are if it hadn't been for that last deployment. I got to watch Blake grow up, which is something he needed to do. We got engaged on his R&R, and decided to get married the following summer. That deployment shaped Blake into the man I was supposed to marry.

While I'm not to optimistic now, I know this deployment will change our marriage for the better. We will learn how to trust each other in a deeper way, our communication skills will be strengthened, and most importantly, we will learn how to truly appreciate each other. It's too easy to take someone for granted when they are standing right beside you. Relocate them to a war zone and you realize what you have and how blessed you are.

However, at this moment, I am not willing to accept these things. Right now, I just want to pout. I just want to be sad that I have to miss a year with my Husband. And that is OK. It's alright to be sad, to pout, to cry, and to be really mad about the situation. Sometimes you just need to be upset. But then, you need to get over it. Tomorrow I will get over it. I will accept the fact that life is changing for us. I will be positive about what is to come, and I will be grateful to have this opportunity to strengthen our marriage.

But not tonight. Tonight I need to be sad. Tonight I need to cuddle up with my Husband and whine. Tonight I need to be comforted. Because the truth is that I only have 6 weeks to be comforted. After that, it's just me. After that, I have to put on my big girl panties and deal with it. But not yet. So I'm off to be a baby and to whine as much I can.