“Guilt comes easily to parents, but as a parent who started off as half of a military duo and then evolved into the stay-behind parent, guilt often became a near-constant companion. During these last three deployments, I would find myself lying awake at night, wondering about the decisions we made and the ripple effects they have and will have on our children.”

This is a quote from a blog post that I read recently called, “Military Children And The Effects Of 14 Years Of War” by Michelle Villarreal Zook.

I could have written these exact words a number of times over the past few years. It is far more complicated than to say that we chose this lifestyle. Trying to figure out a balance of how to treat the distance is impossible. My dogs have separation anxiety because I gave it to them… Sometimes for months at a time I wouldn’t leave our apartment unless it was absolutely necessary because I didn’t want to leave them. We got a second dog so that our first dog would have a buddy when I went to work during the day and wouldn’t cry all day.

We moved home because the loneliness had taken its toll on me.  And when we got pregnant we had no intentions of being in the world of long distance relationships anymore.  Here we are with an almost 3-year old who has seen his dad for a few months out of his entire life.  Every time he sees our SUV he checks to see if Daddy is in it and having no concept of time yet, he does this day in and day out regardless of how long he has been gone.

Guilt has been and always will be the emotion that I do not carry well.  Because I carry it.  Some of the greatest challenges I face are on a daily basis, like sending my son to daycare or planning a day trip without him or going to the gym or doing anything above being with him.  He only has one parent, he deserves at least that all the time (I had four parents growing up, all I want for my child is two).  To say that he needs to be away from me or is “just fine” in child care is a foreign concept to me.  And to say that he needs to sleep in his own bed at night is an impossible notion.  I hate sleeping alone, why would a two-year old want to do it?  We have each other and if he wants me at the end of the day, guess what he’s damn well going to get.  Me.  Every time.  He won’t need me like this forever but as much as he does while his dad is away, he will get.  Feeling needed is welcome (although it sparks guilt to enjoy it) and my longing for his dad parallels his, which means the attachment we have is as healing for me as it is for him.  I truly do not believe it is possible to spoil a child with love, and what he needs is endless love. (Whether or not someone else would have the same views or parent the same in my situation is irrelevant because no one is doing this for us).

We go through phases where he gets excited to see Jasper’s face on Skype and we go through heart-wrenching times where he ignores the phone and will not look at it because he is clearly mad at his situation.  We have watched him thrive and questioned long stretches of time where he is distant and does not communicate at all.

Since he has been in my belly he has felt my heartbreak and the utter helplessness of being left alone the first day of a deployment.  He carries that.  And to invalidate our guilt is the one thing that will make it even stronger.  We confront it the best we can.  We don’t expect anyone to “fix this problem” for us.  We don’t want anyone to feel sorry for us.  And we don’t expect people to know what to say.

The thought of writing about this topic has been culminating for months (maybe longer) and not until I saw the post mentioned above did I feel like I could get it out of myself (even such it has been stuck in my draft folder for weeks).  I am by nature a happy person; I am a thankful and grateful person. Yet I cannot bring myself to put a positive spin on this situation.  That doesn’t mean I don’t love everyday.  I no longer wish time away because life is too short.  But I am not optimistic that the repercussions of our long distance lifestyle will have little or no effect on our future, for that of our son and for our family.

I have to delete the words “my son” to write “our son.”  And that has nothing to do with my (our) marriage or our mutual parenting values.  It is because I am essentially a single parent.  I don’t leave the words though because I don’t feel alone and regardless of space between, we are in this 100% together.  We are just like everyone else, trying to do what makes the most sense and what will be best for our family.

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The only time I ever catch myself sighing or taking deep breaths is when I think about how long it has been since I have seen my husband or how long it will be until I see him again.  Nothing makes me more sick than to replay in my head the trips to the airport to drop him off.  It literally hurts my heart and makes my stomach sink.  I have lived the worst day of my life 14 times in the past 7 years.  Trips to the airport to pick him are the best days of my life, of which I have had 13 in the past 7 years, but they are always clouded by the thought of the last drive there or the ominous truth that it is only a short matter of time before he’s gone again, taking my entire heart and half of my life away from me.  Would it be easier if I shut off my emotions?  Sure.  But I can’t think of anything worse in the world than being numb to the fact that the person you love most in the world is not going to be coming home tonight, or any night for the next few months.

The fact that I do keep it together as well as I do I think takes away from the difficulty of this.  From most we get nothing but genuine support.  It sometimes translates to feeling dependent on help from others but if it takes even a partial village to raise a child, then I should trust that we would need help even if I wasn’t alone.    From some I get the impression that they don’t approve of our marriage, or our family dynamic (and who knows if this is even real).  Well shoot, neither do I.  All we want in the world is to be together.  We’re working toward that.  In the meantime, I will continue to watch my son gravitate toward men since he doesn’t have one at home, I will wonder if I’m doing what I can for him to make him feel safe, secure and loved enough since there’s only one person here to do it in physical form.  I will wonder if he’s “normal” or if he will ever trust us when we tell him that Daddy is only going to be gone for a little while.

I’m not one to think happiness is around the next corner or will come as a result of the next thing or the next move or the next change.  I’m happy even stuck in a seemingly endless temporary situation.  I still can’t help but fantasize about what it would be like to eat dinner with someone who talks and go to parties with my husband instead of alone every single time.  I feel guilty for being sad though because so many people have it so much worse.  My emotional connection to every single person like this in the world is so strong that I do have to remove myself from it.  I can’t watch a remotely sad movie or even see a picture of a dog sleeping outside in the Winter without it crushing my heart.  I truly believe that the best thing I can do for the world is be a happy, productive person and give the universe love for my family and those around me, which it will soak up and spread across the whole world.

My attitude toward our long distance relationship changes about as often as Winnie is on the kitchen table (a lot).  If you can’t accept something, change it.  If you can’t change it accept it.  I’m stuck somewhere in the middle of not being able to change it but refusing to accept it.  I’m in the place where sometimes my dishes don’t get done, sometimes my kid gets away with everything, where I am genuinely happy for other people who are together but I can secretly resent them at the same time and feel okay about it, my motivation comes in waves, I get sick to my stomach when I pass an airport no matter how long it’s been since I’ve been to one, and I’m actually in a place where I rarely know what month it is and seriously have to contemplate whether this is Spring of Fall and I can’t remember the last holiday- the polar opposite of how I was the first few deployments when I knew how many days and hours it had been since he’d been gone and how many until he came home.  That didn’t work, so I am going as far as I possibly can in the other direction.  I have cycled through co-dependency and ultra-independent, through saving a spot on the bed and filling the house as much as possible to make it feel less empty, severely depressed and elated, wishing away time and wishing it would slow down, hating weekends and hating weekdays, feeling sorry for myself and feeling sorry for other people, and just about every extreme range of emotions possible.

Here I am though, I swore I would wait forever if I had to.  I am slightly annoyed that about the extent to which I am having to prove that but our future is bright.  Our life will never be ordinary, it will never be boring.  We will never settle.  And if we can survive six years apart, we can survive anything.  We have spent somewhere around 1,620 days apart.  Will it be hard to look back on it and not be heartbroken?  Yes.  But as I’ve said before, this life is best lived in the present.  I’m six years closer to the life I dream of.  I know there will be a whole new set of challenges when we get to the next chapter, but at least we will have each other.  Considering what we’ve proven to do alone, I can’t imagine what we can do together.

Hold hands, keep each other warm, be kind, write notes, be grateful, kiss, laugh, dance, apologize, go for walks, share dreams, sleep outside, greet each other when you get home, sit down to dinners, be the person you want for your children.