The past 24 hours have consisted of:

4 AM dinner of pizza + Johnny Walker // a heart so overwhelmed with gratitude it almost hurts // that searing heat we had almost forgotten, but that came flooding back in an instance // a year's worth of stories & jokes that our mouths couldn't get out fast enough // sitting down with the toilet lid up // his smell that I cannot get enough of // unexpected hot tears that sprang to my eyes at random moments when I realized this was real // a late lunch of french toast & scrambled eggs // waking up with only 3 hours of sleep because we were too excited to sleep any longer // little piles of messes that have not yet caused me to stress out (give it another 12 hours..) // gentle strokes that took away all the hurt of the past year // the familiar tangle of our limbs that create the perfect puzzle // feather touches on hip bones // not being able to finish saying the blessing at dinner because my throat was choked with tears of thanks // doing almost nothing but snuggling in bed the entire day // a kiss that stopped me dead in my tracks & caused me to drop the spoon in the spaghetti pot // silently shaking with laughter, and remembering how funny he is // catching myself just staring at him, "he is real" // 

Today was magic, the once-in-a-lifetime kind.

I have never understood why people hate on Valentine's Day. To me, it has always been a special day to take the time and make the extra effort to show all the people in your life that you love them. 

Maybe it's because of my childhood. I always loved sitting down with my mommy and a bunch of craft supplies, making lavish homemade Valentine's cards for my family. My mommy always had a wonderful spread of metallic heart stickers, red lace, pink glitter...basically everything little girls' dreams are made of. As a little girl, I didn't even realize Valentine's Day was supposed to contain any sort of romantic notion. One of my absolute most favorite things to do all year was pick out the packs of Valentine's cards I was going to give my classmates. I loved sitting down with a list of their names and pondering long and hard as to who was going to get which card. I did not take this task lightly, and on the morning of Valentine's Day, I would eagerly skip into my classroom and place each card in the respective "mailbox." (I just knew everyone was going to be floored by my thoughtful card selection.)

Even when I grew older and realized the romantic side of Valentine's Day, I was never bothered by the holiday. I saw plenty of February 14ths single, and I cannot remember one in which I moped around all day, soaking in bitter tears because I was "ALONE! Woe is me! Darkness and misery upon all those happy-in-love couples!" Maybe during my casually emo high school years I wrote some angst-filled poem about how I would be forever alone because I didn't receive a pink carnation given out by the Student Council members, but nothing in particular stands out in my mind. Watching couples make out in the hallway between classes, feeling a tiny bit lonely all the time, and wishing at 11:11 that ____ would ask me out? That wasn't Valentine's Day...that was every day in high school.

Maybe I've never hated the holiday because I've always been borderline obsessed with the notion of "love" and everything that accompanies it. It's probably no secret I'm a serial monogamist and absolutely love being in love. I love seeing people in love, I love watching movies about love, I love reading love stories in books, I adore it all, I can't get enough. I audibly squeal when watching The Notebook, Zack & I have approximately 317 kissy pictures, and if a book has the word "love" in the title, there's a solid chance I will buy it without reading the back.

February 14th is a day to wear a lot of pink without being (too harshly) judged, eat an undisclosed amount of chocolate truffles and feel relatively guilt-free, and make certain that every single loved one in your life feels cherished and special. I, for one, am not going to pass any of that up.

Oh, and I get to paint my nails like this and it's considered cute, not creepy and child-like. 

....right?

I want to apologize for the negativity of my last post. (Never blog when you're angry. Write it down first. Sleep on it. Wake up, and see if you still need to publicize your thoughts. The answer is typically a resounding, "NO.")

I have had a real negative streak lately, and it's been pretty toxic. I have never been talented at handling bad news gracefully, it always takes me a few days to come to terms with it and be a normal person again.

Anyway, it was just one more sucker punch the Army threw at me, and one more hit I got right back up from. I've gotten pretty good at that.

I really have quite a lot to be thankful for right now. Wonderful friends who keep me laughing and smiling even when my eyes are filled with tears, a family back home I think of daily, a warm house I can't wait to come home to in the evening, and a husband whose patience and unwavering love for me truly blows my mind every single day. 

 

I am also thankful for this beautiful country I live in. Although it's bitterly cold right now, so cold it hurts your bones the moment you step outside, the snow is undeniably gorgeous. Falling snow is always so hard to capture on camera, I never seem to be able to do it justice. 

One of my most favorite things is how quiet the world is after a snowfall. Stepping out into the early morning light after it has snowed is nothing short of magical to me. It's as if a soft quilt of silence has slowly drifted down and covered your world. You hear nothing except the crunch of your boots on the sparkling ground and the sound of your own breath curling into the air. 

Even better? When you get to spend the morning watching the sun come up, cupping a mug of coffee, sitting quietly on your couch. And at that very moment, you are still, the world is still, and life is stilled to the point of perfection.

Yes, I am thankful. 

There was nothing wonderful about this Wednesday.

 I am absolutely exhausted. Mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Life was not meant to be lived this way.

the final sprint

The deployment is winding down, the countdown is in the single digits, my husband will soon be home for good. 

And I don’t know how to feel.

I have lived for almost an entire year in anticipation of this homecoming, it is the climax of this chapter of our lives. And now that it is upon me, I feel strangely and unexpectedly lost. The past year has more or less revolved around the single moment of Zack stepping foot on German soil.  It seems as though I have found my identity through his deployment. It has consumed my thoughts, my heart, my actions, my soul. Not a night passed that I did not fall asleep thinking of him, and my days were eaten up with thoughts of him. I really cannot count the tears I shed, the ire poor inanimate objects around my house have seen, or how many absurd bargains I whispered up to God at 3AM. I have sequestered my full, unbridled passion away for the last year, because I knew it couldn’t handle the heartache of such distance, such unfulfillment. The majority of things I have done and thought have been with him in mind, and for the last year my largest role has been that of an Army wife with a deployed spouse.

Now that that way of life is precipitously screeching to halt, I am like, “what now?” I imagine it is, to an extent, the way parents feel when their children leave home to make their own way in the world. You have spent so much time, energy, emotion, and thought into this one thing, and now it is gone. (Although I would be lying through my teeth if I said I was terribly heartbroken to see this part of my current life leave.) 

But all of those confusing thoughts are belied by the fact that I have trouble breathing when I think of seeing his face. I have been taking Tylenol PM in the evenings, because even though I am exhausted at bedtime, I find my mind and heart racing with excitement. If I really allow myself to think about him coming home, I begin to tremble and feel as though I just spun in too many circles. Soon, so soon, the life I dreamed of will be a reality again. 

My mind may be everywhere right now, but my heart is en route home. 

{old-- Spring 2011}

"Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's just the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."-Virginia Satir

Jamie threw a party a few weeks ago, which was a blast. We ate delicious food, drank delicious (well, creative at least) drinks, danced until we thought we might be sick, and played games until the morning began its slow creep. I was one of the troopers who stayed awake until the very end, playing Donkey Kong Country 2 on the Super Nintendo. As my sweet friends slept in awkward positions on various living room furniture, I was having a conversation with a friend about the deployment. It was your normal, we’re-saying-a lot-but-what-this-boils-down-to-is-this-SUCKS kind of conversation only Army wives can participate in. At one point, her clear green eyes got wide and she turned to fully face me, “People aren’t supposed to be away from the people that love them.  This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This is not normal.” For some reason, that simple statement has stayed with me. I’ve carried it to the Commissary, its made late afternoon runs with me on the track, and when I rinse the conditioner out of my hair, it’s peering back at me on the shower tile. 

 

Absolutely nothing about this is normal. A daddy being away from his new baby for the first year of that infant’s life? For one year, a wife not feeling her husband’s calloused hands cup her face when he kisses her? A family who should write a personal Thank-You note to Mark Zuckerberg because Facebook is the only form of communication they’ll have for 12 months? It’s disturbing that my friends and I have quietly resigned from “usual” life, and accepted this as our reality because we have no other choice. 

 

I love my friends here dearly, they have been one of the biggest reasons I am getting through this deployment. But it seems we are all just waiting. 

We grin, we run, we sip, we twirl, we hug, we laugh, and we live. But at the end of each day, we crawl into our empty beds, tentatively stretching out one foot to make sure the other side of the bed is still vacant, sigh deeply, and wait for the next day to come.   

This is our normal, and it is so abnormal. 

It seems like ages ago that I got that first red message. (A red message is an urgent message put out by the command, usually meaning a soldier has been KIA or seriously wounded.) I remember feeling like I had been punched, I had to sit down. I spent the whole day in a sort of daze, walking around thinking the sun was too bright and the cars too loud. I did not know the men on a personal level, nor were they even in Zack’s unit. That did not matter, though. They were men, who just months prior, had been walking the same ground as I. They were a part of our brigade, of the place I lived. 

The second red message came on our last day in Sardinia. We were getting ready to go lay by the pool before having to catch our flight home, when both Jamie & I noticed we had missed calls from our FRG leaders. A gnawing began in my stomach, and I nervously dialed the FRG leader. This time, it was a soldier from Jamie’s boyfriend’s unit. 

When we got back to Baumholder, I don’t know what I was expecting. A black shroud covering base? People openly wailing on the sidewalks? But everyone was just hurrying through their normal lives. Getting groceries, mail, and haircuts. While one family got a half-mast flag flown, a flood of well-meaning casseroles, and a gaping awful hole that will never go away.

As the deployment is drawing to a close, I often think of those families who lost their soldiers. They won’t get to stand in the bleachers, holding little American flags and screaming their soldier’s name at a homecoming ceremony. Instead, they get to lay a little American flag at the base of a grave, silently screaming to the heavens. 

This has been my first deployment, and I understand that I am a young military spouse, new to all of this. But I pray to God that I never become numb to death. 

wack/wonderful Wednesdays

If you squeeze your eyes, that sort of looks like a sad face. Yes?

wack 

1. Because I have been away for approximately 7 weeks, I had 7 weeks worth of mail to pick up at the CMR today (community mail room.) This included six packages, two bundles of mail, and thirteen (THIRTEEN) bulk mail slips. The majority of the bulk mail will probably be Tuff Boxes and other things Zack has sent from downrange, but I don't know that because I chose not to deal with that today. (Definitely pulled a Scarlett O'Hara. "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.")
2. I cleaned out my closets today and am thoroughly disgusted with myself. Seriously. The amount of clothes I have is not okay in any sort of realm. 
3. I saw on the calendar that it was "Wednesday" and it made me think of my little brother Cole saying "WUNDSDAY" and it made me miss him, and then I started missing home. 
4. It is cold here. And by cold I mean the forecast is described as "frigid." The word frigid is cute and sort of neat to throw around if you're talking about penguins, Alaska, or your ex's heart. It is not cute in relation to the weather where I live.

wonderful 

1. Because it is so cold here, I am able to wear all of the wonderful winter clothing I own, including my Sorel "Joan of Arctic" snow boots that I purchased after suffering through countless numb toes and a few falls (Uggs are not snow boots, contrary to what the South believes.)
2. While cleaning out random places throughout the house, I found a little picture of an indistinguishable creature Zack had drawn and sent me last year. That boy is so strange and wonderful. Wonderfully strange. Strangely wonderful. 
3. The fact that I am having to pick up so many boxes from downrange means that Zack is coming back. I know other women are not so lucky. 
4. I am starting a new book, Love Stories of World War II, that I am really excited about. I am such a sucker for this kind of stuff. It's not normal.
5. And the most wonderful part of today was, by a landslide, getting to turn the calendar to the month of February. Because this is the month my husband comes home from war.