Flashback Friday

First off, I would like to say I am 100% unhappy with the look of my blog. I want something that screams me and mine. I really love blogging, and writing in general, and the fact that my blog doesn't reflect me is bringing me down more than it should. (It could be pregnancy hormones too. Who knows?) I am hoping to re-vamp it, or have it re-vamped, very soon. But for now, please don't judge me based on my horribly generic and cluttered blog.  Secondly, I am so happy to be back and doing Flashback Friday again! I've missed it! It's so much fun to read other people's flashbacks and to share my own. It gives me a chance to go back in time and remember things I might have forgotten. This week I had no idea where to flash back to. There is so much going on in our lives right now, so much that I am finding completely overwhelming, that I was having a very hard time focusing on some of the old happy. So I went to my albums and started searching at random hoping to find something hat would catch my interest. I found something that made me cry, so I suppose that fits the bill. It certainly seems appropriate given some of the main points of stress we are experiencing as a family right now.
I believe I have posted some of these before, so I apologize in advance for the repeats. This week I am flashing back to my husband's BMT graduation in July of 2007. I had missed him so much during those weeks he was gone. I had never imagined that it could be so hard to spend just a few weeks from the person you loved so much, but in a way it was my training too. Just a taste of what would be coming in our new lives as a military couple. Just a small example of the difficulty of months at a time being spent apart.
I was so happy to see him again! So intimidated by this man in uniform standing before me with a look I didn't know and a new outlook I was unfamiliar with.  I was oh so proud of him! 

 It was an amazing weekend! You never truly know how much you will miss a person until they are gone, even just for a little while, and Lord knows I had missed him. I relished every moment we had to spend together, even when we were just sitting on a bus bench waiting for him to be taken back to the dorms, unable to do something as simple as holding hands because it was against the very strict rules. I marveled in the fact that I could be with him again, even for that short weekend before he left for Tech School.

I remember thinking at the time that somehow that weekend had prepared me for the times of separation we had ahead. The months of Tech School, the inevitable deployments, I mistakenly thought that those weeks had prepared me. And in a way they had. I had learned that I could do things and survive without my husband right by my side. Before BMT I had never lived alone. I hadn't slept alone for more than 5 years, and certainly never alone in my own house. I'd always had a partner in doing the bills and cleaning the house and a man around to walk the dog in our not so safe neighborhood at night...but I had learned I could do all that, and without the help of my husband.  But the truth was, nothing can prepare you for the separation. Nothing can prepare you for deployments. You think you know what you're signing up for, what you are getting into, but it's like saying you know that childbirth will be painful. Yes, you know, but you don't really know until you are in the middle of it. And, every deployment is 100% different. Different lengths of time, different locations, different people...Each place brings with it a whole new bag of unknowns and fears.  I flashed back to Michael's graduation this week because he is getting ready to leave again. I can't say when or where, but he will be gone again, and this time he will be missing out on the birth of our second child. This isn't our first deployment. We're not new at this. He was gone for most of Bubba's major "firsts", and we survived that. Maybe I needed the reminder that I will survive this too. Maybe I needed the reminder that I can be independent, even though I don't feel like I will be so much this time around. Due to my high risk factors, I will be headed home for this deployment so that Bubba and I will not be alone if anything goes wacky. Maybe I just needed a good cry. After all, who doesn't every now and then? :0) I will get through this. Bubba will get through this. My husband will come home to his beautiful little family and it will be another member stronger. We will be another deployment stronger. Just like after BMT we were both a little bit stronger. 
And I am still oh so proud of him!  

Come join in the fun!