My views on life as a military wife

A friend asked me what its like to go through a deployment, and I have never really been asked that before. Its obviously different for any person who has a spouse in the military and all depends on what that deployment means. My husbands deployments are really patrols. He has done many of them, and though Id like to say they get easier, they never do. He goes out to sea for extended periods of time. There is no letters, or care packages or phone calls while he is away. Its like the person you love becomes a ghost. Someone you think about and miss but have no clue where they are, or what they are doing or how they are doing. You don't know if they are OK, or what they had for breakfast or dinner. You don't know when they get sick, or how they liked the cards you sent with them when they left. You kiss them goodbye the day they leave with a hug that you don't want to end and a smile that says "I am brave" so your loved one and kids don't see the pain that hides beneath because you have to be strong for them. You really feel like a single mom. For me my heart aches every day he is gone. I think of him all the time, look at pictures and watch videos of the past and take videos of the present for him to watch when he gets back so he has something of what he missed while he was away. For me its hard when I go home to visit in the summers and attend family functions without my husband. When I got to weddings alone, funerals alone. When I go to party's and I don't have my husband to laugh with, recount the night with, talk with, drink with, especially when everyone around me does have their spouse and I feel left out. 

If you have a husband imagine your kids doing something cute, or new and not being able to tell him about it right away. Or having something exciting, or sad happen to you and the one person you want to tell more than anything you cant. Imagine not knowing what he is doing each and every day?

I'm always afraid my husband is going to come back a different man. I have seen it happen. I have seen husbands come home and no longer want to be married, no longer want to be on the path they are one, or they come back so different that the marriage just falls apart. I worry it will happen to us. I know my husband loves me, and I really do believe we will be OK and that wont happen, but I have to wonder how many wives who have had it happen to them thought the same thing? I know my husband has his worries too when he is gone. While I worry he will come home a changed person, he worries he will come home and I will be waiting with divorce papers or to an empty house. That too happens, and my poor husband has seen many friends go through that heart ache, I of course would never do that too him, but I think its natural for both sides of the marriage to have their worries when it comes to the distance and time apart and what life will hold when they are reunited.

The reunited part is the best. The call letting you know they are coming home. The butterflies and excitement of getting things ready, getting yourself ready. The waiting which seems like forever the day they are to arrive and then when you get to see them. I can pick my husband out of a group of men all in uniforms when he comes home, all by his walk. I sometimes wish I could video tape the reunion because it really is a very happy day. The way your eyes lock, the way the smile spreads across your face, the way you run into each others arms and hug so tightly to one another not wanting to let go. The way the kids scream and run into their dads arms. Watching the kids with their dad always makes me cry, though that might be because I am happy he is home, but it is amazing to see the joy and happiness on my kids faces, and my husbands. Its like a honeymoon all over again. The happiness, the tears, the laughter, the smiles and never ending hugs. Its like your in a dream. You wait to wake up and him be gone again and it takes a few days for it to really sink in that he is home. 

Deployments suck. They are hard, and sad and long. Days are filled with worry and wonder and longing. A huge part of you is missing, and it takes time to adjust to life with him here, and then gone, and then home again. I remember once about two weeks after my husband had returned when we were fighting over something stupid and my mom called and I was venting to her about it, and she said "but he just got home, how can you be fighting already?" first off its more like bickering. Second you make many adjustments. You adjust to life with them here, and then you adjust to them being gone, so when they come back after many weeks/months of being away its hard to merge back into a normal routine. Him going from an 18 hour day to a 24 hour day and us going from a family of three back to a family of four (and a dog of course) 

So that is what life as a military wife is like for me, and as I said this is just how I feel and I am in no way speaking on behalf of anyone else as every persons opinions and experiences may be different.