good bye again

we were all set for him to leave. It had been a great time but all good things must come to an end. His flight was out of LAX and it left at midnight.  Once again we went through this routine. We had done it once before and nothing had changed except for this time I wasn't as sad, I was still elated he had come home.  Once again he left and I watched the plane leave.

It was about 4 days before Christmas. he left and was supposed to be in Diego Garcia in 24 hours but due to the reliability of military flights it took him 5 days to get home. He spent Christmas in Singapore. I was sad that he was spending it alone in a country that didn't really celebrate it. He said it didn't bother him since he felt his Christmas present was having come home and spent that time with us.

I decided even if he wasn't  with us we would still share Christmas. He called on Christmas day in the morning and I gave him my present…. I was pregnant!

I noticed he loved me

He was home. I would get him for 4 weeks. He was just mine, well mine and the baby's and I didn't mind sharing with her. It was great to be a small little family again. He was going to stay til just before christmas. He spent his birthday with us and I felt that I had just received the best present ever. it was exciting to have him home. I refused to focus on when he was leaving because I needed to enjoy this time to its fullest and not be bothered by the sadness of not having him with him.

I felt like my spirits had just been refilled. I felt like we were playing house. We visited some friends in San Diego and went to see my family in the desert. My uncle asked me a question that totally caught me off guard, he asked me why I had married a black man. I was surprised, I didn't know what to say. I thought about it. I had been asked before what my parents thought about me having married a black man, I always answered that their opinion didn't matter. I never thought of it as an issue. I looked at him and then said, "I didn't notice he was black I just noticed he loved me"

he's coming home!!!

So we finally made the plans for him to come home. It had only been 3 months since he had left and it had felt like forever. he was taking a military flight that had stops in about 3 different countries. and it would essentially take him 48 hours to get home, but I didn't care, he was coming home!

The night before he was to leave he called during dinner time, and I thought it was to basically say that everything was on task for him to come home. He called and said that there was some military activity happening in the Indian Ocean and the US was deploying B-52's to the island and he would not be able to leave.

I felt like my world had just collapsed. I screamed and yelled and was upset. My mom took the phone from me and spoke to him. She hung up and then told me to not worry, that everything would work itself out and that he would call me when he knew more. I was upset that night. I finally had had something to look forward to and it had just been taken away from me. I prayed so hard that night. I begged and pleaded with the Lord .

The next day he called and then I heard the words… I'm coming home!

Watching TV

When we had nothing in our hone but a small TV and my moms hand me down furniture, we would sometimes clear out the living room and bring out our  mattress and lay it down in the living room and watch TV form the mattress. If felt a little like we were doing things behind our parents backs. It was fun. this was a much easier process than asking him to carry the TV into our bedroom. Easier because the TV was heavy and also because I have this thing about a TV in my bedroom.

I have always objected to having a television in the bedroom for a couple of reason (and I think I got these opinions from watching Oprah) the bedroom needs to have a singular purpose of bringing a couple together  without distractions, this called for no watching TV or reading a book in bed. the second reason was because if the bedroom does not have the purpose of sleeping in, it is harder to fall asleep since your mind associates other activities to the bedroom.

What a bunch of crap. it's funny to see what truths I held on to, during our first years of marriage.

Games

I am a video game addict. I love video games of all types, Role playing games, simple lever mastery games, card games. When I was younger I had an atari 2400. We had a bunch of classic games like Pac Man and even some horrible ones like ET. I could spend hours upon hours playing. When my parents got rid of the Atari, it was a sad day for me.

Now enter about 15 years later. I started playing a role playing game on the computer. I would stay on the computer all day trying to figure out how to win the game. I know it was a waste of my time but what else was I to do with my time. I didn't have anything else to do. I was bored, time passed so slowly.

I felt like this moment would never end. I felt that my life was essentially at a stand still. I was still at a loss on who I was. I was having a very hard time with this. I held resentment towards him. this was much harder than I had expected it to be. We started to make plans for him to come home on leave. I needed something to look forward to.

Lonely

The thing I hated most about him being gone was lying in bed a lone. I hated that I only used half the bed, I hated not having anything to hold on to. I still slept on "my" side of the bed. There was like an invisible line that I refused to cross. I hated being in bed with no one to talk to. With the baby in another room I felt like a kid again. 

Staying up past my parents bed time, reading a book and falling asleep with the lights on, what made the situation even worse was that I in my old room. I felt like the situation had barely changed. I needed a change! It was hard for me. I had to rediscover who I was since this whole time I had defined myself as his wife. Most of our socializing we done as a couple so we were attached in some way. At his work parties I was always introduced as his wife. Since my life had been defined by his work day, I was at a loss on how to define myself and what I was supposed to look forward to. 

I no longer had to fight with him about how the closet was divided, I no longer had to have the do not touch me argument in bed, I no longer had anyone to be accountable to. I missed him. How was i going to be able to handle 12 months of this? The phone calls and emails helped but I was lonely. this was a much harder adjustment than what I expected. 

I Lvoe yuo

Email was our new form of communication.He had a work email and I got a hotmail account. My parents had an up to date computer with a modem at 56K. Wow, they had upgraded from the 26K they previously had had. My nightly email sessions went a little like this.I would attempt to log onto the server…..busy signal, try again waiting waiting waiting, ok server has responded now all the pinging back and forth between computers, 5 minutes later fully logged on.

I started using the time in between to do exercises. I would do sit up and get on the stair climber, this actually did well for my health and figure. Now to maneuver onto hotmail, it would take about another 5-10 minutes for the email page to load up. So there I was doing exercises again. Since this was a nightly routine I was getting a pretty good work out everyday.

We would exchange about 5-10 emails nightly. We discovered ICQ and were able to use that to IM each other. This is where I picked up my typing skills. It was nice, I felt that he was still a part of my daily life. He became my diary of sorts. I would recount my daily going ons and exclaim how much I missed him. There are some words that I was always misspelling when I ended my emails or ICQ conversations I always accidentally ended it with I lvoe you…. so it became my sound off, he always misspelled you and turned it into yuo. It was a perfect fit.