long deployments *not for the easily offended*

Please don't read if you are easily offended, or do not know how to take others opinions with a grain of salt.

This is mostly about my misery that has been of late, due to the United States Army.

How in the world do you take a person away from their families for a god damned year or more? I have never had more anger, than now..flipping through friends pictures of their Christmas mornings, with the dad, mom kids...grandmas...all together, laughing, smiling...instead those of us missing a soldier, struggled through the holidays season, not feeling one bit of the magic that is Christmas....fighting back tears at every glance of a decorated Christmas tree, or feeling the absolute silence and loneliness of the house as you put your kids to bed on Christmas eve and played santa all alone. Thank God for technology, but do you know how heart breaking it is to watch your baby stare at her daddy through a fuzzy blurry screen?? Listening to his chopped up voice and just as she goes to smile at him it drops?? To hear him call her name, and just feel the longing of him wanting to hold his first born, his little girl..his little baby girl that he hasnt seen or held since she was 3 weeks old?? to sit on the couch alone at night, just sitting there. looking at his empty computer desk trying to remember him sitting there, just something to grasp onto..to lay in an empty bed, to be dreaming of him ..a dream so damn clear and real, he is hugging you and you are smiling and laughing, and he is there..home with you..you wake up from your dream into the REAL nightmare...you roll over to a cold side of the bed or better yet you bump into your 5 year old that you MAKE sleep with you so you arent alone. To have not cooked dinner in 88 days, to have no legitimately smiled or laughed in 88 days..some people might say, who cares?? its not that big of a deal, get over it! no, you dont get it. I have a bond with my love, like no other..and it hurts..and if you have went through something like this before and not felt any of these things, then i dont know what to tell you..i need my love, i need him. I need him like no other....we just had a baby together, and he should not have to go away for so long...i understand war, i understand the need for deployments but for so long???? no.

You picked this life. No, sorry...I never picked this. I fell in love with someone ....a person..first and foremost. I cannot help who I fall in love with . I did not choose war, violence, worry, fear, depression...

Whomever made deployments a year or more, can just go fucking fall in a hole....have they ever been away from their families for a year? I quite fucking doubt it.
oh, the Army does it to save money..oh bull shit, this country wastes so much on on pointless crap every single day, billion and billion of dollars down the drain on things that no one really gives a damn about, but they cant spend money on deployment rotations? So our soldiers dont miss 14-15 months of their newborns life? So maybe those left back home can have SOME sanity left  by the time this is all over with?

Its the worst feeling in the world to love someone so much and have to worry about them dying out on missions. Do you know what its like to fear the death of a loved one for days and days and days on end...knowing there are people out there TRYING their hardest to kill someone you love? Oh im not supposed to think about that? Im supposed to stay busy, be strong for my soldier, keep him focused..well dear lord i can only do that so much before the what ifs set it, before im thinking of how someone may harm him terribly.. Not even knowing for SURE if they are going to come back home after the damn 14 months is even up...to worry about if they are safe, warm, eating well....to wish time away every single day, to count months..OH 3 months isnt THAT bad, come on three months..for leave, its only 3 months or so..then to look at the big picture and realize, 3 months is a whole summer. A whole damn summers worth of months. Seems like forever in the future. Then when leave does eventually come, i have to give him up again for another half a year?  Frustrating. Its so irritating to be wishing time away when you have small little baby, and there I am wishing she was over a year old already, a toddler..and her infant year gone.

I cant even begin to write about what its like to drop someone off and have to turn your back and leave them knowing they are going away for so long ..when you have their little baby at home. It hurts so bad. I can still see him in his blue shirt, jeans, backpack as i left my love standing in a parking lot in another state, I had to leave him there ..just leaving him stand there, send him off to a dangerous place.....just drive away, i turned around and waved from the highway, tears streaming down my face with awful sobs escaping my body, I did not think he would see me wave..to see him staring as i drove away, him looking as sad as ever watching me go, and then waving back to me ...he had seen me wave...and then that was it...now i havent seen or touched him since..and lets not forget the airport goodbye, when he almost missed his plane and the last time he seen our 5 year old she was screaming for him as he ran through the gates, her screaming for him to please not to go and to come back to her over and over and over again...I will never in my life forget that moment, then to come home to a house so still and quiet and his chair empty and most of his things gone..except his shoes, yes his shoes sitting there where they left them and you cant even move them. You find his dirty laundry laying around and it brings you to your knees in tears, smelling the shirt, just trying to feel them around you and remember. Trying to remember their touch, their laugh, their scent...anything. To miss someone so bad, that it hurts all the way down to your bones...maybe its not that way for everyone, but it sure is for me. I long for him, I miss every single thing about him.

And not knowing a date for the homecoming? Get real, you can take our loved ones away for a year plus but you cant have a clear end date??? how is that fair to anyone involved??? How is it fair to take them away for months to train, then there is a leave date..but no return???? or to CHANGE IT?? but you sure as hell have training dates and leave dates. To say oh yes, a 9 month deployment, yup 9 months..so you plan your wedding, kids birthday parties, i explained to my 5 year old that he would be home right after her bday and we would hold off until then for her party, that made her happy and excited...now every day she tells me so he will be home for my birthday party when im six?? ..then you get there and now they have no fucking idea when they are coming home? that is awful. Hey army, why dont you come tell my 5 year old autistic daughter that daddy wont be home for her birthday party? that she mentions every.single day. You come deal with her tears, and you come tell her its A OKAY cause what daddy is doing is important, more important than being there for her after she has waiting 10 months, its more important for him to stay in kuwait/iraq then to come home for her birthday party...and its ok for daddy to miss your sisters first birthday....Please do, please come explain this all to my children after they have already been without him for halloween, christmas, new years, valentines day, and a million other firsts for the little baby..  I want to say really bad awful things about the people who changed it or LIED about it in the first place. 

The worry and fear before a mission is all consuming, it literally paralyzes me with fear..i get irritated, i lash out, i cry, i stay in bed as much as i can...there is nothing like not knowing if the love of your life will come back safe to you...There is nothing like right before a mission, when they are telling you goodbye..and it sounds like the *last goodbye* you know just in case...just in case something terrible happens...its like they tell you a final goodbye, you can sense it..then you tell them yours..and lets not forget that his orders were for kuwait, now he goes to iraq a couple times of month on missions?? How does that even make sense? Ill be the first to admit i know nothing about the army, but i sure as hell know common sense...i  was told how safe he would be, how he wouldnt be in iraq, it would be  a walk in the god damned park...nope..so every single thing the *army* told me, has been a lie..a big fucking lie...they claim to care so much about families and this and that..if they did, they wouldnt have such long deployments with no end date in sight, along with saying one thing to us and doing the complete opposite.

So many families are ruined by long deployments, lets face it folks..what we go through its not kind, you have to be REALLY STRONG , to get through something like this ..the stress? its crazy. Having to worry 24/7...then becoming independent, taking care of your kids all alone, doing every single thing alone, them there, being away from US back here..making new friends, living a whole separate life for over a year, well yeah cant you see how that can ruin a family?? Its a shame. Down right sad situation.

How a new dad is missing everything his very own first daughter does, from her first smile, her first giggle, her first time eating solids, her first time crawling, her first words, her first steps and her first birthday, amongst every other little first that he is missing..how is this even fair ...oh but he signed up for it, no he sure as hell didnt sign on a dotted line saying he was ok with missing all these firsts...it all stems from army deployments being WAY too long.

So tired. I want this over with. And for ANYONE to say im not proud of my soldier, they couldnt be more wrong. I am so proud of him and what he does, i make sure he knows that, he knows i love him with everything i am and respect him for what he does. I just think things could done a lot differently to save a lot of families from pain, hurt, confusion..ect ect...

And in the end, i love him. I love my hero. I love him more than words can ever say. And when he does come home, we are going to have the best life. I worry because I love, and im not angry at HIM...im angry at the situation...Zach and I have grown closer since this deployment, we talk a lot, and ive learned a lot more about him, and he probably has me. He is my world...and again, yes..i am so proud of him. He is so strong, he is loyal, he is amazing.....and all this pain is worth being in his arms again.

I do direct all hate mail to the garbage can...this is me venting, and im allowed to state my feelings.....on my blog :)