Once again, I don't have a lot to give at the moment. I returned from a two-week intensive training course at Fort Mccoy, Wisconsin on Saturday. Two weeks sounds like a walk in the park compared to my year-long deployment overseas but I found myself in Royal Asshole mode upon my return home. For those that aren't familiar with a Royal Asshole, on a scale of 0 to douchebag, this person isn't even on the scale. Yesh, it was that bad.
I can't really pinpoint why this Royal Ahole emerged upon my return. Maybe it was because the kids were acting out, which causes me some guilt about being gone. Maybe it was because my husband had to leave the following Monday and, of course, Fathers' Day was jammed in between there. Maybe it was because I epically failed to even meet the minimum standard for the father of my two children on Father's Day. (I mean, really? You couldn't even pull off a card, Jill? Are you effin kidding me?) Maybe it was because I also had a 20th class reunion to plan and attend the following weekend (when did I get old btw). Maybe it was because I'm hopefully having eye surgery the week after next. Maybe I'm just a straight up legit asshole, I really don't know, but I'm sure that last one is at least a little true. Whatever the reason, I just found myself stuck on Bitch Mode. I'm still about 50% there if I'm honest with myself. These are not fun times, no matter how long or short the absence. Everyone is off schedule, things are not where I left them, the kids are wise enough to employ manipulation tactics 101 when one of us is gone, and well, I always feel a bit like a stranger when returning home. It's jarring to go from planning a war in some undisclosed location, talking about the range of a Howitzer and what a SCUD missile does, to being, well, mom and wife. It's not a transition I have perfected by any means and it's fucking hard. I don't want to do the fucking laundry. I just planned a damn war for pete's sake, my brain screams.
Adjusting and readjusting to life after any sort of absence is actually really difficult. John and I continue to throw fuel on that fire with reckless abandon. Last summer, we didn't see each other for six weeks. This summer, it's a mere three weeks so you think it would be easy. John will leave for four months at some point after October and I have more training in Arkansas and Colorado on the horizon as well. No absence is easy, no matter what the absence is for or how long it is. But, no matter what, no matter how big of a bitch I am or how much money John blows while he is living large while I'm gone, we have continued to make it work. Sometimes I think of how much we have been tested and tried from the day we were married. We were married four months and I left for six months. I was deployed for a year, his business imploded, we lived apart for basically an entire additional year when i worked in Des Moines and he lived in Nebraska. We have moved more than most people move in a lifetime in the past five years in order to keep each other happy and through it all, even though it got ugly, we stuck it out. To me, that is a sign of strength. Sometimes I get weepy over how much we have survived. I'm tearing up as I write this. I think how much easier it "should have" been. But then I think to myself that if things had been easy, if we never had to be apart, we would never know how strong we were. Is strength never letting someone go or is it letting them go and having them return to you, time and time again, no matter how big of an asshole you can be? I'm learning it's the latter. We give, we take, but we don't control. We let go, we take a risk in pursuing a dream, but we always come home, whatever state that may be at the time. We argue, we fight, but we don't give up. Love isnt controlling. Love is freeing. I think many people confuse love with control. True love wants each person to become the best version of their self, not keep someone in shackles. I'm learning to accept that sometimes life's greatest gifts come wrapped in adversity. My marriage has revealed itself, especially in the early years, as a source of adversity but in the end, it is truly one of the greatest gifts I have been given because it has revealed itself to me as true love, something I would not have dreamt possible ten years ago. Thanks for putting up with this asshole, John. Love always, Your Soulmate (sorry you're stuck with this asshole).
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