My husband and I married in 1998. He is 4 years younger than I am, but he was so kind and genuine. I loved him so much. I came to the marriage with a lot of baggage. I had been abused by my mother's 3 husbands, one overbearing boyfriend of my own and a failed marriage to a junkie (closet junkie...... I didn't know until 5 months into the marriage). But W was so amazing and so patient. He even adopted my oldest daughter and treated her as his own. By the end of 1999, we had a baby girl. Things were good.
And then 9/11.
He lost his job as an engineer when his company was adversely effected by the tragedy. He took another one but things were not the same. He was devastated. I was working long hours at my job to cover a mortgage we could no longer afford. He was slipping away. In a desperate attempt to fix things, I agreed to leave my job and move half way across the country for a job he thought he wanted. He left 2 months before we did and I stayed to sell the house. That was the first of many separations for us. It only served to push us further apart.
By the time the girls and I moved, I harbored a great deal of anger towards him and I did little to conceal that anger. He started talking about joining the military but I didn't take him seriously. After 6 months, my employer was asking me to come back and offered to pay to move us. He consented but then he was miserable. He tried to going to back school but hated it.
One day he came home and told me he had joined the Marines. I was not surprised.
I told him the night before he left that the worst thing that could happen would be that we wouldn't make it. I was so cold and distant. But it is true when they say that you do not know what you have until it is gone.
It took losing him to the Corps for me to understand just how much I loved him. By the time he completed his training, almost a year later....... We were both very different people. The job I had loved so dearly, I had come to see as the single biggest issue in our marriage. I was sacrificing my family for a job that didn't give a shit about me. So I quit an decided to go back to school.
I wanted desperately to make up for everything wrong I had done. I was so proud of him for what he had achieved and the man he had become.
We talked a lot about the past and how lucky were were to get a second chance at making things work. But our time was cut short by his first deployment. I heard that wives could volunteer at the unit (which was over 200 miles away from our home) but I signed up. And every drill weekend, I was there, doing what I could for family readiness. And soon they put me in charge of the program. And W would tell me how much it meant to him that I chose to be involved.
When he came home, things were difficult but we tried to work through them. He was distant but I thought he would get better. Then he volunteered to go back. I told him that I support him no matter what but I wanted him to consider what it was doing to us. Things were not ok and he was leaving and I feared it would only get worse. He said he hadn't noticed. He went anyway.
I worked even harder with family readiness, but by this time I had graduated and held a full time job. Then I was laid off. I spent most of his second deployment and many months after he returned looking for work (13 month in all). It took a toll on my self worth. Shortly after he returned home, I lost my grandfather. He was the only father I had ever known. I was devastated. And W couldn't be there for me, he couldn't be there for any one. I tried seeing a counselor. They gave me pills and made me come back often. W was angry with me a lot. He said I was very negative. I just wanted him to be there for me and tell me it would be ok. He told me to suck it up and I wasn't the only one who lost someone.
A year later, I had just started a new job and was also a candidate for field agent for a government agency. Things had come a long way and I was working very hard to turn things around. I had been training 7 days a week to pass a PFT for the gov job. On the way in to work one morning, I received a phone call from my husband. He was upset and told me I had to come home. I asked but he wouldn't say why. I started to cry, he was scaring me. Finally he said that he had done something very stupid. He was sorry. Turns out, the stupid thing he had done was the 20 year old secretary from his work and her boyfriend had just caught them in bed together. I was told he was out of town for work, so I took a little time for this all to sink in.
That was 2 years ago.
This blog is my journey to come back from all the bullshit. We have both caused each other pain. We both have a lot to repent for. And as difficult as things get, I remind myself that I am not a victim of a bad situation. I am a wife and I have a husband whom I love dearly. And marriage is not all rainbows and puppy dogs. It is hard. But when you stop fighting for something, it ceases to be. And I am not ready to give up. Some days, I'm even convinced he isn't either.
