....I look back....**

091014
beloved LEGS....

.....this week...its a full moon.....and the last two nights I have been in a restless state and missing you.....I fall asleep and then awake in the middle of the night....its a bizarre thing to be awake in the middle of the night and alone...the entire town is dark and asleep and there I am at the window or on the front porch sending wishes and hopes out into the universe....why does it always feel like the world listens better at night?  I wish with every molecule in my existence that you come back to me......and that I am the woman you deserve.....

.....I play games with myself.........I imagine that you are home and when I crawl back into bed you will be there....and then I think if you were here....I would feel safe and protected and peaceful enough to sleep the entire night...and if for some reason I was to awake....I wouldn't leave the bed....instead I would lay there and clutch you for dear life......and breathe you in.......and smile....thinking back on all the nights I spent awake waiting for you to come home......

I've had a terrible case of nostalgia......I think its because of September 11, and my current plight in life plus an old CD I found in my car it has music from when we first started dating on it.....people say that you should never look back.....that looking back is living in the past and that breeds unhappiness.....sigh.....what a wonderful luxury that would be.....to never look back.....

I've written about it before.....this strange time capsule as military families we seem to always be in.....we go through such long separations that if we don't look back and remember the connection and reasons for waiting are lost......but time doesn't go back it goes forward.....the entire time your gone its like time stops.....but it doesn't.....all this looking back has me thinking.....its almost as if I have lived several different lives in one lifetime......

And when your away.....I live in a glass ball.....or maybe an hour glass.....I am alive.....I can see life....so it affects me.....and life can see me but my affect on it....is mediocre at best....but there is no depth.....I live a life behind the glass....all aspects are not real.....but the time still passes.....

.....Just another day in the life of an unlikely military wife....**

.....you rescue me....**

090614
beloved LEGS.....

....I have holed up in the house for the last five days acting like a complete teenager.....staying up late, sleeping in late, eating pizza and ice cream....spending hours on the phone....watching old movies....and feeling an adolescent sense of lost and immature.....I can't bring myself to leave the house and face the world without having some clue as to who I am and where I am going......

....I have really slumped.....letting go of any composure and dignity I had spending every day in my pajamas....and not taking care of myself.....its safe, predictable and easy in here......with the exception of my worry and annoyingly persistent questions about my direction....

....I keep telling myself I need this time....to decide....and that all the answers I seek will come if I am patient.....

.....and then.....just like that.....You rescue me.....

.....like a gentle kiss upon my lips....a surge of oxygen enters my lungs.....new life, rich new blood....an electric current jolting my heart....and words that fit perfectly into the emptiness and loneliness filling me up.....

.....and I rise.......

.....you know all the right things to say to stop the world from spinning.....amidst a hurricane you give me peace......

.....I understand the envy you possess to be physically present when I am daring to fail greatly....I understand the depth of your worry when I am taking such risk.....I also understand your eagerness to return to a less complicated woman.....and at the same time......your astounding desire to be sure that I have everything I ever dreamed of in my life......you said "I want you to picture your life when you are no longer boxing so that I can make that happen....."  if prince charming existed in real life I am sure it would be you.....

....did you know that more than anything in the world I wish I could be with you....that I worry every second of every single day and to the point it makes me physically, emotionally and mentally ill?  I wonder what kind of a man will come home to me.....how the anger and frustration and wounds you have endured will affect your conscious the rest of your life......I want to be everything you ever dreamed.....I want to be your protector, your safe place, your relief, and give you pure joy forever.....

....our love is amazing because....its like a mirror....it reflects itself.....

.....I still don't know what I am going to do.....but......I can say.......

.....that after having conversations with You.  With Kelsey. and with Mariannae.  The world seems to be a very out of control, scary place at the moment.  I can't help but think these types of conversations took place and happened at this time for a reason.  I am completely absolutely terrified of what you are dealing with and going through......and revelations from Kelsey about things she saw and went through and things she knows about coming from the U.S.  have me even more.....frightened and troubled....Mariannae grabbed me over the fence the other day crying....I think she is scared and worried too.....

.....I keep thinking.....that......if your fighting......and the people I love are fighting.....then I should be fighting too.....

....Just another day in the life of an unlikely military wife.....**

....a riddle that you solve....**

090414
beloved LEGS....

....sigh......

.....that inevitable echo....it both disgusts me and frustrates me to feel so undeniably lost.....and helpless.....

.....I need you.....but I can't have you......is there anything more......hopeless?

.....I really can't believe myself.....I need you to help me deal with all the emotional turmoil swirling around in my head and there you are busy just trying to stay alive.....how could I possibly burden you will all my craziness?  Simultaneously how could I not share my thoughts and feelings with you....what would a marriage be if it weren't even in the smallest ways a shared.....journey?

.....the oscillation between being strong, making independent decisions and troubling you with it all is a full force monopolizing affair.....I can't seem to come to any conclusions....and when I do.....I change my mind.....I am in a tornado and your the only thing solid enough to hang on to.....

.....because so many parts of my life are so vastly different, I feel broken.....a classic case of multiple personality disorder....my soul, the language I speak, and all the thoughts I have, things I want to do, things I want to make, people I want to be......are so endless.....and strong.....and varied.....

.....I stumble along aimlessly in a house full of mirrors of which every girl in the reflection does not recognize herself....tell me LEGS....when you look in the mirror do you recognize the man you've become?  For if you don't, at least we have that......

....so many parts are unstable and unsure....and every decision, every move has monumental influences on the direction of this life we lead......even when I calmly think every detail through....the right answer still eludes me.....

......I know....that even if I could only see your face through plate glass......I would have all the answers I seek.......for me.....you are like a rune....you give my soul all the answers to all the questions....I am a riddle that you some how solve......

.....Just another day in the life of an unlikely military wife....**

....smithereens....**

090414
beloved LEGS....

.....people love dirt.  A picture of you and I and a caption that reads "I don't know you anymore" made my blog the most popular piece of smut to ever grace my facebook......trust me, I am celebrating.....

.....I lost my fight last Friday night, and with it a rematch, a following rematch, a championship and myself.  It was a fight we both thought I could win.  When I called you.....and told you that I lost.....I don't think I have.....been the source of such depression in you the entire time we have known each other......

.....you told me I should quit boxing.......

.....You have always been my faithful dreamer.....that magical source I feed on to keep reaching for the stars in the sport.  It hurt me that you gave up on me.  I felt like I made this leap because you told me too, only for my safety net to be pulled in the moments leading up to my demise.....

....it was so uncharacteristic of you to speak this way.....to be so angry, and disappointed.....so negative and hopeless......

.....I wanted to quit right then and there because I never want to feel like I did in those moments ever again.  I am not sure.....if people know how hard it is to break bad news to a deployed spouse.....last deployment it was the death of three grandparents and this deployment seems to be the slow death of our unifying dream.....

....the whole episode has put me in a place of total incapacitation........its not normal for me to ever question your judgement....its not normal for me to question mine......

.....to feel like I have lost my husband....and what has been the pinnacle of my life these last few years....has blown my self identity to smithereens......

....Just another day in the life of an unlikely military wife.....**

....echo....**

090214
beloved LEGS....

....I imagine that before you die the only thing in the world you want is to be held....to be touched and comforted....to feel safe....at least that's what I think....

....the same thing happens when your heart begins to die.....the words, the time, the absence of words......the absence of time....all act as weapons....mortally wounding the very organ needed to keep loving and keep fighting....

.....the blood oozes out....slowly....and the beating though it continues in desperation becomes labored and off rhythm....

I imagine the only thing that could bring it back to life is to be touched.....by you......you see that is the only thing that even comforts me these days.....is the thought of your touch.....I imagine feeling your cold skin.....your breath....the rise and fall of your chest.....the pulsing of the blood in your veins and that strong steady heart beating......under my head my ear pressed.....to your skin....under the cage of your ribs.....

....your fingers in my hair and in my hands.....the way you envelope me in your embrace.....that euphoric mixture of both freedom and safety.....those feelings are so distant and blurry.....I can hardly remember.....what it feels like to.....

.....I feel crazed without your touch.....so hungry for it....and frustrated and angry....and with my dying heart.....I become more rabid and weirder by the day..........getting my hair cut, getting a tattoo or being punched at training momentarily knocks the fury back....but getting THE LOOK or being complimented....only fans the flame of peculiarity.....

.....I'm still breathing.....and my dying heart is still beating...even though lethargic.....my eyes have glazed over.....and the blood that's spilled out from my heart.....has turned blackest black....I say your name....but I only hear an echo.....

....Just another day in the life of any unlikely military wife....**

....I don't know you anymore....**

090212
beloved LEGS....

...it shames me to admit....that there is a point in every separation where.....I feel like I don't even know you any more.....and despite having done this many times before its always shocking and painful to me....its the part where I feel like....I have been diagnosed with Cancer and I am starting to die......

it begins like this.....you will call, or we will facetime or skype, or we will message one another.....and we have absolutely nothing to say to each other......

You can't possibly understand or grasp the things that I am seeing and doing, or I feel this tension.....this jealously that any normal person would have in your position.....it makes me eliminate details....and all together stop telling you what normal every day life is like for me.....

....and though I question you about your life.....you tell me very little....and when pressed you become annoyed with me....and cold....so then we just stare at one another or wait on the line.....with only the silence and emptiness between us......

.....when we hang up.....I just sit there....feeling doomed.....and the dagger, or the arrow, or the bullet, pierce my heart.....beginning the slow....excruciating process of dying......yes.....dying.....this is the part where.....I hold on to the small tattered pieces of what's left of us....which are only pieces we have created in the past......but I panic because I know that we are no longer who we were or like we were.....and the future for us appears bleak....

....its usually after this point that you will say or do something that is so unlike you.....that I can only sit in shock and wonder what exactly happened to the man that left me here so many months ago....in this particular instance you gave up on me......a blind faith that you had in me and my abilities were taken from me......

....the mixture of abandonment, confusion, anger, sadness and hopelessness consume the both of us..........I am convinced my heart has started to blacken with this revelation....because I feel as though you finally see me..........as I see myself.....

.....Just another day in the life of an unlikely military wife....** 

....I realize its not you....**

009114
beloved LEGS....

....being with your family without you is a profound kind of experience.....seeing every expression you have in the face of your parents and siblings is so powerful and extraordinary I feel like I am sitting in your presence for that split second.....and then its gone.....

.....my breath catches, my heart beats, and I almost leap across the distance to kiss and hug them....only to be left in a cloudy sort of despair when I realize its not you....it is actually your Brother....or your Sister....or your Mom....or your Dad....

....the kind of laughter that I enjoy with them is the same exact humor you and I share.....I laugh to the point of tears and belly ache.....only to be left wishing you were there so that we could share the memory and laugh for years over the hysterical episode......

....it aches to be around them because it makes me miss you so much.....laying in your childhood bedroom.....I can feel the traces of you all over the place, and the yearning I have to be next to you again almost breaks me in two....

.....and seeing your face.....in all the childhood and baby pictures.....you honestly haven't changed one bit despite all that you have been through and all that you have seen....your spirit and energy are still like that of yours as a child.....I can only hope you come back again.....the same.....

....it makes me feel so lucky to have found you, you who my soul loves.....so lucky to have held you.....that I will never let you go......its difficult to face this presence and image of you every where I turn, only to look again and discern that your are not in fact there.....I feel like in one moment I am living a reality.....and the next a fantasy......

.....its in these moments that I look away.....because the tears are welling in my eyes.....its in these moments....that I know.....I am more fortunate than any one should ever be......its in these moments that a very real fear sweeps across and through my soul.......

.......its in these moments I am afraid I will wake up from this dream.....to live a nightmare.....

.....Just another day in the life of an unlikely military wife....**