My journal has always been my place to come to write and share my heart. When I made the decision to blend my 365 and my journal I never imagined I would struggle so much with what voice to write in. Do I write from my heart, to my boys, to you, to me….one thing that seems to feel right is that it is all from my heart. That can be the common thread, I hope, that will link us day to day.
Today is a big day in our house. I rolled over this morning to the smell of coffee. It was early, my body was telling me that much. I squinted to make sense of the numbers on the clock. 4:58 am and my honey was already long out of bed. My heart started a little race of its own and I tossed and turned until I couldn’t stay there any longer.
I came down to see him at his computer. I could feel his energy and later I would find he had indeed already pushed the button.
You see today is the day we try to take our lives back as our own. Today is the day that we stand up on our feet and make a choice. Today is the day that a push of the button quite possibly bears the most weight that it ever has. Today we asked the military for an early retirement. It will only be eleven months earlier than planned but that eleven months could be ours.
In the weeks leading up to this decision I have been busy at work in my heart. Digging past layer upon layer in which this military life has weaved itself into my life. To the outside it may seem obvious. You spend your life living one way for nearly twenty years and of course it would be hard to change course. But I have been surprised on just what level.
I know there are a million things I will miss about this life, yet the liberation I am feeling just amazes me. I had no idea the military had such a hold on my life. That every breath was heavy with the weight of what if. Thank goodness I haven’t known this before now, I would have not been able to endure.
Feeling the circus that is running through my head now that the button has been pushed is proof to me that what has been normal, is oh so not. At the very core, the fact that for at least one more time the military is in complete control. The how long, the approval, the denial, the dangle, the hurry up and wait…their terms, always their terms. I can barely imagine a life lived on our terms.
Yet I am grateful. Today as we drove away from the library in our little base community I felt lucky and if I am honest a touch scared too. Lucky to have been a part of such an amazing community of people and yet scared (no, not that there won’t be any libraries) of living outside this community. How do you make friends without this common core? When I walk into our base library and see another sweet mom like I did today, I know we are the same on some level. That we have something very big in common without saying a word.
There is this new world that I will have to learn to navigate, living in a little neighborhood in my own country! Who would have thought.
Today I share my little Jack happily reading books at our base library while I busily negotiate my feelings.
