Tuesday, August 28, 2007

I Have An Announcement To Make...

JOHN IS COMING HOME IN EXACTLY 1 WEEK! LIKE 7 DAYS, LIKE AS IN 168 HOURS!!
Yea, I'm just a little bit excited, in case its not glaringly obvious or anything.

Monday, August 13, 2007

glamour

I have this thing with fashion magazines. I can't resist picking up 2 or 3 every time I go to wal- mart and scouring the pages soaking up the stylish clothes that cover every page. But last night I was flipping through the pages and came to this article. Please if you have to time to read it, it will be well worth your time.
As I read the words I became sick, angry, upset, I felt helpless and scared and yet grateful. I was moved. I cried as I kept reading, I wanted to lay the magazine down and forget but I couldn't. This is something we all need to see and read about every now and then to remember to be enormously grateful for everything, everything we have. We need to remember the small things in life and not get so caught up in not having an outfit to wear or not having a lot of money and not having the job you want. Reading this article made me feel horrible for getting so caught up in my life and made my problems seem small. I cried last night about the way humanity is, and why people do the atrocities that they do, against fellow humans, who share the air, have the same blood, are made up exactly the same and are created by the same God. It opened my eyes and I became even more so grateful than I already feel that I am, and was grateful for my full stomach, for the bed I was in, for feeling safe, even for the fact that John is just going for 7 months and that if that was my biggest problem I was facing and that I, should get down on my knees and thank the Lord for what I've got and that's my only problem.
For the first time I was actually proud of what John is doing. I'm still scared and upset, but if he can help to rebuild a country and end violence, violence against innocent people who just want the luxury of feeling safe then I think that maybe I can handle this. That if women who have been through unspeakable things and still find a way to become whole again, then I can too.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

North Carolina

I went to North Carolina to visit John this weekend. This was our third and final trip. Third as in like we actually got three girls together, with all our girly shit, and drove for 12 hours! We started talking about it on the our way up there. It's like we're just getting in the car and going! Just like we were going to a friends house or something, or going to the grocery store. It had become a part of our life.

These trips have meant a lot to me because I might have crawled out into oncoming traffic if I hadn't gotten to see John and secondly I have gotten to be wonderful friends with 2 girls who's husbands are going to Iraq with John.

All these trips have been wonderful because it kind of allowed me to get away for a while. The entire 12 hours we spent driving we talked about everything, as anyone would expect women to do. We talked about how we felt about this deployment, we talked about how in our opinion the Marines have changed us and them, how scared we were, how angry we were, and how ultimately, we all wished this wasn't happening. When we got to North Carolina, being with John again was almost surreal and the fact we were in a different place and holy shit it was Thursday and I was not at work! All of it just made it seem like it was going to be ok. I remember waking up Saturday and being so happy because I had all that day and all day Sunday, everything was gonna be ok. It's insane how you can live on one weekend for so long. Between the weekends we went up there, I did nothing but think about the things we did the last time and counting down the days until we left again and that kept me going. It's like you have to stuff 2 weeks worth of stuff into one weekend to make up for the lost time away from each other. Like you feel like you can't just let go for a second because you might miss something, like you feel guilty for even sleeping because your wasting time with that person, valuable time that will never get to be replaced. Time that you know will have to be well spent enough for you to make it to the next time around. Time that you know on Monday morning will end abruptly and you will be tossed back into the real world, where you're alone again.

Monday, July 30, 2007

So I Haven't Posted In A Long Time...

Ok. Sorry, I've just been trying to keep myself really busy lately. I've been working more hours at work and have joined a gym. However, it still doesn't really fill in the blank space of John being gone.
He's still in North Carolina training...or at the least the Marine Corps' idea of training which is more like sit on your ass for 3 weeks, then actaully work for a week straight without hardly stopping...then sit on your ass again. I just haven't really felt like writing too much lately. I haven't felt like talking too much about all of this. It's like as long as he's still in North Carolina, it's all ok and I'm ok. I know this is gonna hit me really soon and it's gonna be hard, but I guess I'm just trying to enjoy being stupid and not facing this yet. I've gotten to go visit him a few times up there, and he got to come back home for a week around the 4th of July, so it's not that bad. Every weekend almost I have something to look foward to, I know that I'll be seeing him soon and that keeps me going. But I'm especially scared now. This is my last weekend to go visit him in North Carolina. And the weekends go by SO fast up there and it feels like I'm hardly there for 30 minutes before it's time to leave again. I'm really excited about going, but then again, as it gets closer to leaving I'm terrified because after this I won't see him for close to a month! And I won't really be able to look foward to going up there on the weekends again. Being able to look foward to something really keeps me going. But now that Iraq is THE near furture I'm not gonna know what to do to fill in the space. John is so much a part of me and my life, and when he's gone there's just so much emptiness...

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Snapping that baby back in place

So I went to the chiropractor this morning and.... HOLY SHIT I feel so much better. The doc took x-rays of my back and I think he sort of died a little inside when he saw them and realized how young I was to have such a fucked up back. Your spine is suppose to be curved anyway, but the way mine was curved was the complete opposite of how it is naturally suppose to be. He said that my neck was the reason everything else got off because the curve in my neck is the worst. And since every action has a reaction...all the discs are off centered because of my neck. All the nerves that run from my neck are causing the rest of my back to hurt and is causing my spinal discs to literally turn around. The doc said that all of this is caused from a mixture of stress, possibly from some previous car wrecks and bad posture. He said that it's so bad that it's caused my right shoulder to be higher than the left, my head to tilt slighty AND my left leg be a tad bit shorter than the other. I got my back popped too and lord, I was in heaven. He popped it in like 8 or 9 different places. I have to go back a 2 or 3 times a week for like the next 4 weeks to get everything back where it should be.

So there you have it-20 years old with a back that looks like a fucking roller coaster at disney world.

Monday, June 11, 2007

1:00 AM June 9

Dear Lord,

Lord please do not let this happen. Please, do not take this man that I love so much. Lord, I'd do anything at the drop of a hat just so he could stay here. I know we're not the most deserving people, Lord, but please don't let this happen. Please. I love him so much and I'm sort of lost without him and it's hard to even breathe sometimes with him gone. Lord, I beg you from the bottom of my heart, my soul, my mind and body to not let this happen. You've given me so much Lord, and I am forever indebted to you but if you can just make this one more thing happen, Lord I'd be beyond grateful. Lord, we need a miracle and I know that you're the only one that can do it, so I ask you please do not take him. Please, please please, do not take him. Don't tear us apart, Lord, don't let us have to go through this. I cannot even fathom what this will be like with him really away. I won't be able to call him at any time, or see him in the mornings and afternoons, I won't be able to curl up next to him at night, I won't be able to just sit in the same room with him even. Lord, I ask you to please let him stay here, with the people that love him more than he will ever know. Please Lord, please.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Just Like Saying, "Ok, smack me in the teeth with that brick"

How exactly do you prepare to send someone you love away for a year? Especially someone that you sometimes miss when they're at work. How do you come face to face with reality and learn to be okay with it?
John and I have always had a wonderful relationship. It's had it's ups and downs, like any relationship, but overall the good times prevailed. When I found out that he'd signed up to join the marines, I was totally okay with it, I thought it would be the best thing in the world for him (sighs and kicks self in ass). I realized just how stupid and ignorant I was on January 23, 2006 around 9:00 p.m. when I dropped John off to go to Parris Island, SC. The second I drove off I started to cry and I realized how much he meant to me. All I wanted to do was take back all the times I'd been an ass, the times I didn't tell him thank you or that I was sorry, the times I didn't tell him how much I loved him. Those 3 months were quite possibly the worst 3 months of my life. It started out giving myself little pep talks saying stuff like, "It's ONLY 90 days, you can do that!" (sighs and kicks self in the ass for being so insanely demented). The strangest thing about it all though was that when it got down to like 60 days, looking at 60 days felt like longer than 90. Then when it got to 40, it felt like an even longer time to wait. There were so many times that people would try to be helpful and be all like, "Well, you've made it through 30, you can make it another 60" and all I could think of was what was the nearest object that I could chunck at their face becuase Oh.My.God 60 days! Did they not have ANY idea how long that was?!
Then I'd start thinking about John and how bad he had it and no telling what in sam fucking hell he was going through. Then, I'd start to cry because I knew he was lonely too and cold and tired and hungry and just as miserable. There are just no words to fully describe any of this.