Lets start this on a positive Note. I challenged myself to think of 5 Highlights of 2007. This was hard for me. It was a rough and challenging year. But here are some things I came up with.
1. Road Trip- January- Now if you were on this trip you would be shaking your head at me for adding this as a Highlight, but it was. For a few reasons. First of all 2 great friends came out and held my hand as the soldiers , my husband included, left for deployment. We all loaded into my little Corolla and drove across the country. It was rough! We fought, disagreed, and generally argued about everything. We got no sleep and ran on nothing but caffeine. But you know what it was a hell of a ride! We stoped where we wanted to stop, we even went to San Antonio (which was a major adventure) and took a picture at each state sign. I would totally do it again. Crazy as it was, I can look back at it now with a big cheesy grin and say yeah, that was fun.
2. Seeing my kids for the first time. The kids left for Alabama with the grandparents on Dec. 26th, So I did not see them until January 10th. That was the longest I had ever gone without my babies. And I loved walking in to that house and seeing my son. It was late but he stayed up and waited for me. Later I crawled in bed with my baby girl and snuggled up to her. She woke up the next morning and could not believe I was there. That was a major hightlight!
3. Being close to Ft. Bragg, okay not exactly close , about 7 hours. But, close enough that I got to see Chris more than I would if I had been in AZ. I got a call from him one day and he asked me to drive up. He snuck off the base for 6 glorious hours and it was heaven. I will not add details but it was the best feeling in the world to see his face after 3 months!
4. North Carolina Trip- A few weeks later we all got to go to Ft. Bragg and see Chris before they flew out to Afghanistan. It was heart wrenching but we made the most of it. We visited the outer banks and explored lighthouses. It was a wonderful time and I truly enjoyed it.
5. Not 24 hours after leaving Chris with the kids crying our eyes out , I got a call from him. Come back he said, I have another week of R and R. Things got postponed and viola we got another 5 days with him. I went by myself this time because the kids were in school. 5 days in a hotel with the man of my dreams ......Highlight!
And I thought of some more!
-Finding out I was stronger than I believed
-Getting a new apt., and moving out of mom and dad's
-Finishing a 10k
So here are the Low points of this year
1. Obviously , Chris leaving. January 6th was an awful day. Standing there for hours saying goodbye. It about killed me. The same goes for each time we said goodbye at Ft. Bragg. 3 different times!
2. Chris called from Bangor , Maine right before his plane left the country. I never felt so alone in that moment. I did not think I would survive it. I think I physically felt him leave the country. Until I heard his voice again, I am not sure I breathed.
3. Communication has sucked this year! It took weeks for email /phones. And it is still not great.
4. Our relationship nearly fell apart. Enough said. This is between him and I , I will just say that neither one of us handled this first deployment well and we pulled away from each other instead of trying to come together. Chris and I have never handled time away from each other well and as the months went on we both fell into alot of depression.
5. You can never go home! It can not be done. Nothing like feeling like a teenager again living with the parents, oh yeah but this time with kids! Ahhhhhh!
6. Last but not least. Realizing that family will not always be there for you. That you can not depend on a whole lot of people in this world. I could expand on this but I am working toward releasing my anger instead of mulling around in it. My main goal is just removing myself from the situations that cause the anger.
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