Telephone

When Blake & I were dating, we would spend hours on the phone. We would talk on the phone, then meet each other for a date, then talk to each other when we got home. We talked all the time. We would be on the phone for several hours each night. We would talk so long that the battery on the house phone would die, and then when we became old enough to get cell phones, we would talk until the phones became so hot we thought they would burst into flames at any given moment.

We talked about anything and everything. We would tell each other all about our days, talk about what funny things had happened to us, talk about the future, and we would talk about nothing. Sometimes our conversations got so boring that we would fall asleep on the phone together. And I don't mean that in the oh-thats-so-cute way, I mean that in the we had talked so long that we had nothing left to say and we would accidentally just fall asleep. Some times I would wake up at 2 am with my phone still attached to my ear.

I loved that about our relationship. If you know me at all, then you know I'm a talker. I love talking, and I love talking to anyone who would listen. And because Blake was wooing me at that point, he would listen. The longer we dated and especially once we got engaged, the less and less we talked mainly for the simple reason that we got really, really busy. And we had also run out of things to talk about. We still talked everyday, just for a shorter amount of time. Our conversations changed at this point too. Blake and I were living about 300 miles apart so when we talked, we mainly talked about each others' day, when we would see each other next, and we started making plans for our future.

Then we got married, and our communication pattern had to change once again. When you see everyone each day, there's not much need for phone calls. He still calls on his way home from PT to tell say good morning and to wish me a good day. I'll call him when I get off work and am heading to school just to check in. And then of course I call when I get out of school to let him know it's time to start cooking! :) But there is no need for an hour long conversation. Even when were both at home, we don't have hour long conversations. We still tell each other about our days and share funny stories and our frustrations from the day. We talk about what we want for dinner, what chores need to be done, finances, and what we want to do for the weekend. On the rare occasions, we get into deep conversations about our relationship, our future, and where we see ourselves in the next five years.

It seems like every time we get settled into a pattern, life switches on us again and we have to relearn how to do things all over again. And that is so true in the military. The second you get used to something, the military changes everything up. Deployments rear their ugly heads, and our communication pattern gets changed all over again. And that's what we're going through right now. When you're 7800 miles apart, your communication pattern has to changes or your just going to fall flat on your face. I have to admit, we've been falling flat on our face the past week and a half.

It just hasn't been easy for me, and I believe for him too, to transition into this deployment. It's been really hard. And today I realized why. We haven't been talking. I mean we talk almost every day, but there is a difference between telling each other about our day and actually talking. We talked for 40 minutes today. I was able to tell him about everything that has been frustrating me, about our lives in the past week, and about what is coming up. We talked about important stuff and things that aren't so important. It was like one of our high school conversations. Sometimes, I miss those conversations.

There's not much good that comes out of a deployment, but temporarily we get to turn back into those high school kids who were crazy about each other and could not get enough talking time in. And that is a great thing!