When you have an actual record, or cd, that keeps skipping, there's ways to fix it.
But when it's your brain, your heart, your emotions, what can you do to fix it?
Almost every day that he’s gone, at some point or another, I think to myself, “I just can’t do this anymore.”
It’s a broken record in my brain.
The thing is, I haven’t figured out an alternative.
Leave him? Not an option.
Tell him to get out of the Navy? He just re-enlisted. Also not an option.
So, then, what?
…...Not wake up some morning?
That one, I admit, I’ve contemplated. But it’s also not an option.
Not a lot of options here, it turns out.
What is it, exactly, that I “can’t do?” anymore? I ask myself this. I try to define the problem.
The missing him.
The loneliness.
The feeling of our family never landing.
Doing so much on my own.
Saying good-bye again. And hello again. Knowing that another good-bye is already nipping at our heels…
Not in terms of “in a year” anymore. But it seems instead over, and over, and over..
In months.
or weeks…
A year turn-around used to sound cruel.
Not it sounds like a vacation.
How is this a marriage when he is more or less a visitor in our home?
How is this a partnership when I make 90% of the arrangements of our family’s every day life?
How is this sustainable?
How is this ok?
Nothing but silence meets those questions.
The only answer I have is this:
We are doing this.
We are doing this.
We are doing this.
I don’t know what tone of voice to say that in. A triumphant one? A tone of dread? Of resignation? Of surrender? Of confidence?
We are doing this.
Ok.
The record stops skipping
Until tomorrow.
But when it's your brain, your heart, your emotions, what can you do to fix it?
Almost every day that he’s gone, at some point or another, I think to myself, “I just can’t do this anymore.”
It’s a broken record in my brain.
The thing is, I haven’t figured out an alternative.
Leave him? Not an option.
Tell him to get out of the Navy? He just re-enlisted. Also not an option.
So, then, what?
…...Not wake up some morning?
That one, I admit, I’ve contemplated. But it’s also not an option.
Not a lot of options here, it turns out.
What is it, exactly, that I “can’t do?” anymore? I ask myself this. I try to define the problem.
The missing him.
The loneliness.
The feeling of our family never landing.
Doing so much on my own.
Saying good-bye again. And hello again. Knowing that another good-bye is already nipping at our heels…
Not in terms of “in a year” anymore. But it seems instead over, and over, and over..
In months.
or weeks…
A year turn-around used to sound cruel.
Not it sounds like a vacation.
How is this a marriage when he is more or less a visitor in our home?
How is this a partnership when I make 90% of the arrangements of our family’s every day life?
How is this sustainable?
How is this ok?
Nothing but silence meets those questions.
The only answer I have is this:
We are doing this.
We are doing this.
We are doing this.
I don’t know what tone of voice to say that in. A triumphant one? A tone of dread? Of resignation? Of surrender? Of confidence?
We are doing this.
Ok.
The record stops skipping
Until tomorrow.
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