Counting by months

I count by months, not days. Counting by days makes it seem so long...like hearing the slow tick of a clock on the wall. But counting in months, that is a much smaller number. July 22nd to August 22nd- one month done. Another month halfway done. 5 and a half to go.

I should be reading for class now, books on war and what it all means. Strategery. As if there is a strategy that would actually fix something. But instead I lay down in my bed, staring at a Skype that he wasn't on....as if by staring at it would make him appear. But all the wishes in the world add up to nothing. I sometimes think that it would be easier if I rarely talked to him, so I wouldn't be tempted to tell him what I was actually feeling. But I wanted to tell him that I felt like I had sunk into a black pit, where I continued to go through the same motions only with tears in my eyes. Sometimes I break down. In the parking lot, when I pull up behind a car with stickers, 'in honor of the fallen', and 'I heart my soldier'. I just stare at those stickers as if they might someday mean more. And sometimes walking through a store, I just feel the dread and pull my sunglasses over my eyes. I always liked to hide behind my sunglasses- my protection from the other eyes. I wanted him to know, but I didn't tell him or anyone else. He would feel like it was his fault, and it wasn't. There were so many stressors before he left- buying a new house, not having a place to live inbetween buying a house, difficulties with the loan process, moving, promotion at work, acceptance to a masters program while working full time, a report due out at work...then he found out he was being deployed.

I had found the engagement ring booklet three months before he deployed. I realized that wasn't happening. No ring. And I felt crushed, like the Army had taken something from me. Three weeks notice for deployment. He came back from a three week TDY, and there it was. It is bad enough that we live 6 hours apart right now, but now it is oceans and lifetimes apart. My life here goes on- buying stuff for the house, painting rooms by myself, learning to do all that stuff alone. He's never even slept with me under this roof. Sometimes I fear that he won't, not because I think that he will die (though that is a possibility) but moreso, I have this fear that something will happen and he will run out of this relationship. To understand this, you would have to go back to the fact that at 28, I am his first girlfriend, and it took him 9 months and me leaving him for him to finally commit. Yes, I know that he is committed and that he loves me...but there is that little part of me that screams that he will be afraid and run away. Then I will be alone with my painted walls and new couch. And my dreams will be crushed- that is the scariest part. I've built all these dreams, we've built a life, and I can't see starting over, I don't think that my heart could take it. Of course it would take it, if it had to, but I would never be the same. I see him as the one that I want to grow old with- not because he is the perfect one (far from it) but because he is willing to work on it even when things are hard. He's honest, caring, truthful- those are things that are hard to come by. And we laugh.

But today I'm not laughing. Today I'm crying. And counting months. A lifetime to go....