Day Two, You Suck

When I said the first day was the hardest, maybe that wasn't exactly true.  Maybe it will be the first week or the first month.  All I know is this is hard ... damn hard.

When I found out that Brian would essentially be living away from home for 3 months all I thought about was the kids ... specifically Bella.  It is no secret that she adores her daddy and I was immediately concerned for her.  I had no idea how she would react to her sole provider being only me.  Then I thought to how I would be the sole provider of everything during the week.  OMG!!!  No one to back me up ... no one to play tag team when the kids were just driving me insane.

I guess I was so concerned with how the kids were going to feel that I forgot to think about how I was going to feel.  You want to know how I feel?  I feel like crap ... that's how I feel. 

By the time I finish this post it will probably be almost midnight.  MIDNIGHT.  Nerissa doesn't stay up until midnight.  But for some reason I can't sleep.  The thought of crawling into my bed ... alone ... makes me want to cry ... which I have ... each night so far.  It's like after the chaos of my day is gone and the house is quiet, I feel empty.  My bed is way too big for just me and all the open space makes me sad.

I hate change.  I know this about myself.  I am not surprised that I am not dealing well with this.  Brian will come home tomorrow and after three days he will be gone again.  Rinse, wash, repeat ... over and over again for 3 months.  THREE MONTHS!!!!!  Holy crap ...  I'm not sure I can do this for 3 months.

I am so proud of Brian ... I really am.  I commend him for having the courage to chase something he wants.  That is a part of who he is, and what makes him the man I love so much.  But after these two days I've been flooded with so many different emotions.  I went from feeling this intense love, to a deep depression, to anger and feelings of insecurity.  I am completely overwhelmed with emotions and I'm not sure how to process them all.

One thing I'm struggling with is this sense of loss of control.  I feel like we are going to be living completely separate lives and that scares the hell out of me.  He will be meeting new people and experiencing so many new things ... what if he comes back different?  What if he wants different things when he returns?  I know marriage is constantly evolving and changing, but I also know that nothing is forever and nothing is guaranteed.  These are the things that consume me in the quiet lonliness of my empty bed when I can't seem to sleep or turn my head off.

I am spent.  Good riddens day two.  You may have been better than the first day, but you still sucked.

 

The First Day Is The Hardest

Not so long ago ... I wasn't a very good wife.  It wasn't that I didn't love my husband ... I think it was more that I didn't show him love or more specifically I didn't know how to show him.  Oh, I adored him, not that he would've known it ... but I did.  The problem was that for years I never really showed him how much he meant to me.
I think after awhile, it got so bad for him that he just shut himself off from me.  The sad thing was that things had gotten so bad between us that I didn't even notice the pain he was in.  Of course knowing what I know now I could definitely see there was a problem, but not then ... not in the moment.
When everything exploded, and my life as I knew it was different ... he was there ... almost a shell of a man I thought I knew ... a man that I was completely certain I was going to grow old with.  My f o r e v e r.  BUT ... I don't think he believed that f o r e v e r would include me anymore.  I had broken him ... to the point where I wasn't sure there was a way to fix all the "broken" I had done. 

I can't say I blame him.  Etched in my memory is this picture of my love ... my husband ... staring at me from his place on the couch ... his eyes were cold ... an emotionless face.  As I sat and put everything on the line ... let down my walls and said all the things I should've said for years and never did, he sat there, just listening ... emotionless.

I knew it was bad.  Very, very bad.  The weeks following that night on the couch were some of the hardest weeks of my life.  Trying to fix myself ... trying to fix Brian ... trying to fix US ... trying to be the wife that he deserved.  Then somehow ... very slowly I started to hope.  I started to get glimmers of the man I loved ... it was like waking him up from a coma.  It was slow ... painstaking ... and absolutely amazing.

Then one day several months after the explosion ... I was at work sitting at my computer when an email from Brian popped up on my computer screen.  It said three simple words ... "I love you".  I'm not sure if he even remembers sending it, but it is a message I will never forget.  I read those three words and immediately burst into tears ... ran from my desk and sat in a bathroom stall trying to compose myself.  He loved me ... after everything we had been through ... he still loved me. 

Tonight Brian left for the police academy.  He will be living in Green Bay during the week and coming home on weekends.  We were trying out Skype on the computer and I sent him a quick instant message that I loved him ... he replied "I love you too!"  I started to cry.  I was immediately catapulted back in time ... to that same girl sitting in front of her computer screen clinging to the hope of a new future.

I love my husband ... more than I could ever express in words.  His absence in this house is overwhelming to me, but I know from experience that the first day is always the hardest.