One Plus One Equals 2 Hundred Billion

It's hard loving two people at once. Ok, so we love lots of people at the same time but I mean loving loving. Ya know, like, "I love you." The three scary words kind. It's hard. I have no idea how people cheat and those people that maintain two families secret from each other or that kind of thing because it's tough enough loving someone who is here and someone who is not both at the same time, I couldn't imagine doing it and hiding it with two people who are both alive! I find myself extremely fortunate though, that I have two people who love me right back at the same time. I don't know how rare or normal that is, but I know that I'm lucky to have it. What's even harder though, and what has brought me to finally blog now that I can (I've been in a nasty funk) is missing those two people at once. Missing one person sucks. A lot. Missing him on deployment was awful and missing him after he died, well I thought that pain would eat me alive. Now the other person is gone. Ok, he's not gone gone (don't freak out) he's just away on Marine Corps stuff but... I miss him. Then I find myself thinking Oh I miss Zach... and I definitely miss Jonny. GOSH I MISS THEM BOTH! It's definitely a different kind of miss but I miss them and the loneliness of them both being gone is super icky and has admittedly put me in a funk for a couple days. I feel like I'm being a big baby. Zach is not deployed he's just doing his work elsewhere for the minute, in the United States. I shouldn't even be worrying. And it's not the worrying, it's just the missing. I barely get to talk to him due to his work demands and after having him in the house all the time I realize how lonely lonely really is. Like I said, I feel like I'm being a baby, especially with so many people I know wish spouses or significant others deployed but some days it kind of just brings me back to the before I met Zach. Well, not right before, long before I met him. Right before I met him, I had started to grow accustomed to the loneliness. The doing every single thing on my own. All of it, it had finally started to become second nature. And then there was Zach. And then there was hardly ever being alone (in fact I had to make time to be alone because I missed it). And then there was help that after a while I finally learned to accept and just let happen. This just kind of transports me back to... oh about the 8 month mark when things were pretty bad for me. When the realness of my loneliness had set in, Jonathan had been off the earth for 8 months, friends had gone back to their normal lives (or just leave completely) and I was alone. Thank God for baby girl. She keeps me from ever being truly alone but I must admit, having Zach around to take some of the pressure off me, of all things I have to do by myself every day, was so nice. I didn't realize it until now when I have to do it all on my own again, but he had been so helpful and things had been so much easier and smoother with an extra pair of hands. And he was here when I was sad. And he was here when I was angry. And he was here at night when I'm still not ok. And he was just... here... and I miss him. He'll be back in a couple months but shock of being alone once again was rough and I sunk in a hole for bit, I'm just now clawing my way out. I don't like to admit it. But it's true, it's there, and maybe if I come to terms with it, I won't be clawing out anymore, I'll gracefully climb out and forge on until he's back and I'm readjusting to having to share time and space with someone else again. I wonder if this is what people feel like with multiple deployments? I wouldn't know because we only had the one. When they go again, the loneliness from the last deployment hits so hard and then just as you're adjusting to them being gone, bam they're not anymore and it's time to adjust to sharing space and time again. Yeah, I'd imagine it'd be something like that.

The 1/6 (Jonathan's unit) are deployed again. There's only a minimal amount of people I still talk to from the unit. There'd been so much drama, so many rumors, so much crap that I just kept close the ones who I trusted (and even then certain people surprised me), but I still know things. They did a Miller-Motte gives back week at school, where spouses of 1/6 were 40% off to show our appreciation for their service. Of course it had to be 1/6. Of course it had to be put in my face that this was our unit. That this should be our deployment. That I should be coming in to get my hair and and nails done to keep my mind off my husband being gone again. Of course it had to be hard. I did fine though. I blocked out the unit and deployment talk. I dealt with people I didn't want to see, who'd betrayed me and still haven't apologized (ya know, people who promised they'd be there for me but if anything came between us they'd still be there for my daughter and then wouldn't answer me when I tried to find out what was going on and wouldn't return the $200 dress I had loaned them or several other things they had even when I was trying to trade for some of their stuff that was still at my house from the days we were friends that abruptly ended without my knowing). None of that really bothered me while I was working. The "who"s didn't bother me - Who the ladies were that were in the clinic, who their husbands were, I don't think it even bothered me that said ex-friend was there. It's whatever now and that's my place of "business" for the time being so I go ahead and do my business. What did bother me was the "should, could, woulds." This should be our deployment. I would be doing xxx. Ya know? The what-if's that don't go away. And then the fact that there was no Zach to go home to get it out to, to cheer me up with some stupid joke or dance or... whatever it is he does that always has me smiling. That's when it bothered me. But hey, I got through it, and in the end I think I may have come to a realization. A conclusion I've been putting off for the last year and 4 1/2 months. I think it just might be time. I think I need to get the hell out of Jacksonville. I think being here is keeping me too connected. Keeping me from moving as much forward as I could be. Do I want to leave Jonathan behind? No. Do I want to leave our memories and our life behind? Absolutely not. I've learned though, like I did with the material things, that a change of location will not do that to me or to us. He will follow where I go. His memories will be with me always, he lives forever on in my heart and in my daughter. But it may protect me from falling to often in the shoulds, coulds, woulds, and what-ifs. The watching of people having the life I'd expected, wanted, anticipated. The life of a Marine wife, in a Marine community doing Marine family things. No, I don't want to leave behind my friends and their families that have become my own family, but I don't have to be right here all the time to keep them, either. I know wherever in the world I am or they are, that these friends I have now will also be with me. I think it might be time, soon, though, to move away from the reminders that I don't have what I used to have. I think seeing it day in and day out leaves scorch scars on my heart that my life will never be what I had anticipated when I met and married Jonathan. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it's time for me to move, literally, onward, and find what else is in store for me now that I am on this new journey.

I guess you may be able to guess that Zachary is getting out of the Marine Corps. At first, it really bugged me. I'm a Marine wife, how will I be a civilian's girlfriend?! But the reality is, a relationship shouldn't be defined by a person's occupation. He was a Marine and will always be a Marine. And I will always be a Marine wife, with or without Zachary. I was and still am married to a Marine who now guards the gates of Heaven, that doesn't change my status. Not being with a Marine will not change my ties to the military, will not change the person I have always been. It was scary at first, but I think I'm starting to look forward to it. Toward the new possibilities. Leaving Jacksonville. Zach's new career, whatever he chooses. I don't know, it's all confusing and I was really down about everything, but now I'm letting my optimism rise. Maybe it's time for a new challenge in my life, supporting Zach in his new life as well.

Maybe this post makes no sense. Maybe it's a bunch of loosely connected things I've thrown together, but it's the things that have been setting in my brain pushing me down into this funk and maybe, just maybe, getting them out will lead me towards the graceful walking out of the hole I mentioned earlier.