Some venting. (My apologies.)

Every time John leaves, I always try to talk to someone about it.  About how hard it is.  But I really don't want them to say "at least" and then follow it up with their situation or tell me the time will go by fast or that it will be okay.  I know there a lot of other crappy situations in the world, infinitesimal possibilities of life sucking.  That doesn't really help though.  And the time will not go by fast.  None of the people I've talked to have spent 8 months away from their spouse completely alone.  They've lived with family or around all of their friends.  Most of the military spouses I know here all moved back with their families while their loved one was away.  I don't know.  It just feels like the people I talk to need to make it competition and tell me their lives are harder.  I've heard most of the at leasts in the book and this time I don't want any leasts.  This time I don't even want to talk to anyone about it at all.  I'm just writing here about it.  Writing it here where I can fling it out into the internet and maybe some of the pain will go away with it.  I know I'm whining and I shouldn't be.  And I know I chose this.  For some reason most people seem to think that since I chose it I'm not allowed to feel it or to talk about it, especially not to whine.  But just for today I don't want to be positive and optimistic and strong and say that it's fine and it'll be okay and that I actually will have some good times alone.  Because that's not honestly how I feel.  The hardest part is that my best friend was just here.  I wake up ready to talk to him again and can't.  His socks are on the floor.  His pillow still smells like him.  He's not just gone getting us coffee and pastries.  He won't be right back.  There's no one to go to dinner with or catch a movie with.  Friends from back home tell me they're alone, too, but they actually aren't.  They grew up there and live a few minutes from family and friends or even live with them.  And it gets really infuriating to try to tell someone how extremely alone you feel and have them say they are in the same situation when they aren't even a little bit.  When they have their kids living with them or their husband in the next room asleep.  Sure, their young kids or sure the two of you are going through a rough patch, whatever.  The only beings I have to talk to most of the time are cats.  I named a bug this week.  I leave the house once a week to go see my therapist.  Once a month I leave twice so I can see my psychiatrist.  Every day the only reason to get dressed is to get the mail.  I sort of had one friend for a little while but she moved away.

I was going to college.  I was going to get a master's degree in something to do with Geology.  There was a point to my life.  And my husband lost his job.  And he couldn't find another one.  And I couldn't find one.  I was let go of every job I'd had and then worked for myself for 6 years.  I wouldn't have hired me, either.  My mom didn't think it would be a good idea for us to live with my parents for a while and we were already borrowing money.  So, we did what we had to do.  I said, "Hey, John, you know how you've wished you could be in the army full time?  Well, my stuff is taking a really long time so let's do it and leave everything behind."  So we did.  We got rid of a lot of our stuff.  We borrowed even more money and moved across the country and then borrowed money again.  I missed my brother's wedding.  Then I missed my sister's wedding.  Then I missed my niece's wedding.  I don't know if I'll see my grandmother again.  Or if I'll ever see my cats again that still live with my parents.  They're getting really old.  Because I'm trying to pay extra to pay off our car since it's starting to have problems.  I spent over $200 on it last month (aside from the car payment itself) and now the light came back on again.  And people keep asking me when I'm coming to visit and actually giving me guilt about it.  We went into debt just to get out here.  I'd like to climb out of this hole and get some savings for the first time in our marriage.  We recently paid off the loan we took out when we got here and finally this year paid off the medical bills from the surgeries I had in 2006.  And I don't want to travel back to Utah by myself.  I don't want to board my cats somewhere I know not so much about.  I don't want to spend all the money we're finally making to fly out there and then spend the rest of it so John and I can go again together when he gets back.  Cause people want to see him, too.  Hell, pretty much every soul we know likes him better than me, anyway.  (I'm not bitter.  It's just a fact.  I like him better than me, too. xD  He's got charm and he's good with people and he's just human heroine and people can't get enough of him.)  The thing is that I really do miss everyone back home.  I miss my family and my friends.  Some of my friends have kids now that I've never even met.  I haven't met my niece's husband.  And I feel so guilty.  So so guilty.  But I also feel like I'm starting to put things back together.  My anxiety is starting to get under control.  I'm starting to lose a little bit of weight.  I'm working to rebuild our finances so we are more secure.  And I feel like I have this wobbly tower of blocks that I've been working on for so long and if I let it go even for a little I feel like it could topple over.  And I don't know if I'll be strong enough to try it again.  So, I'm not coming back to Utah until I come back and visit with John and when we can definitely afford it.  And it's not because I don't miss everyone.  Do you think I want to spend Christmas alone?  Do you think I want to turn 30 alone?  Do I think I really did have a good Thanksgiving?  Really?  I heated up a freaking tv dinner and watched Netflix all day and cried myself to sleep at 7 pm.  And I don't mean to sound ungrateful.  And I don't mean to be a whiner.  But, John and I didn't get married to have kids or to just be married or to finally have sex or because it was the next step.  We got married because we want to be together.  And since then we've just been trying to make it, just get by so we can be together and afford it.  But it seems the only thing we could do to be together was spend a lot of time apart.

So here I am.  I'm sitting on the couch I sleep on every night cause I hate sleeping in the bed alone, with Zoe's feet on my back while she's sleeping, and missing John so much I can't breathe.  That feeling that he was just here is taking a long time to fade away.  And getting to have 15 straight days together was so great.  We never got to have a honeymoon.  We spent a night in a bed and breakfast really close to our apartment and then one more night in a bed and breakfast in Salt Lake City, about an hour away from our apartment.  And while we were gone my mom cleaned our apartment and made it nice for us and some of John's friends were mad they didn't get to decorate our car at the reception so they broke into our apartment and toilet papered it and spread gummy fish everywhere (cause they just had to make a joke about sperm for some ungodly reason) and filled the tub my mom had just cleaned with little live fish that promptly died from the trace of bleach still left in the tub.  Plus, the mouse that had gotten in while John's sister had lived in our apartment found the mouse trap and was dead on the kitchen floor.  So we came home to a dead mouse in the kitchen, toilet paper everywhere, gummy fish in our bed and all over, and a tub full of disgusting dead fish.  Those friends still don't understand why I was upset.  They don't get that my mom cried when she found out cause she had worked hard to do this great surprise for me and they undid all her work.  She had even put the top of our wedding cake in the fridge with two champagne flutes and a bottle of sparkling cider.  We had $50 in the bank when we got married because we'd both lost our jobs the month before working for a joke of a company that hired family members, couldn't afford it, and let us go.  My parents gave us a bed as a wedding present and we bought a loveseat we saw on the sidewalk outside of some apartments for $15.  That's how we started.  We've lived in a bunch of crappy places, some infested with bugs, one had dog crap smeared all over the walls cause the previous tenants didn't take their eviction very well.  John worked jobs where his bosses and coworkers treated him like crap and didn't pay him well for it.  I taught piano from home because we could only afford one car and we couldn't afford the gas for me to take John back and forth so I did what I could from home.  And I went to school for a while (my mom drove me for a year and then we moved and I took the bus for a year), which obviously didn't work out.  And now for the first time we live somewhere pretty nice.  We only have neighbors through one wall, which is so awesome.  John's finally starting to be treated with respect at a job and there's room for growth.  He wants to become an officer or something like that.  He'll be able to go to school.  And if we're patient and work hard, he'll work his way up so that we can have more time together.  We'd like to have a child soon, too.  Things are just coming together.  And you know... writing about all this has reminded me why our being apart is going to be worth it.  It's helped me feel a lot better.  And a little stronger.  Just thinking about where we've been and where we hope to be going.  Remembering eating dry cereal out of the box for dinner a couple of times cause I just couldn't ask my parents to help us out again.  Watching everyone else buy houses and have kids and feeling left behind.  Feeling cheated while others are able to work for their parents while we were grateful for that job at Deseret Industries taking charity donations.  Now it feels so nice to be able to buy a new purse or a new pair of shoes even though the soles haven't fallen off the other pair yet. I feel like things might just turn out okay for us.  We have a plan.

Well, I'm sure this hasn't been good for anybody but me, but if you read it, thanks. :)