Well, last night there was an EARTHQUAKE… 😦 I’m guessing that no matter what I do something will always happen to interupt what I want or need. Someday maybe I will finally get my chance, but for 13+ years i’ve been waiting for my time. In this prison that never ends that I have no control over. Day after day it’s either recovering from a time when he is out to Sea, or thinking about how the next dang deployment is around the corner. I honestly think that they only way out is to be dead and buried, or WAIT. Wait always waiting…I just think it’s going to be such a laugh for someone to come to find out that when it is time for “retirement” something tragic will happen and I will die or he will or something terrible to end the joy will happen. I suppose it is inevitable something always does come to destroy happiness.

I hate being a Navy Wife, all I ever wanted to be was Patrick’s Wife, not wife to the GOD DAMN Navy. 😦 Day after day, this life in the military defending our freedom, only problem it doesn’t defend any freedom of the spouses that have been wedded to it. No freedom, oh I guess there is the freedom to get a boyfriend on the side to take the place of missing that spouse physically, there’s always the freedome to stay busy doing what ever volunteer work needs to be done, and heck there is also the freedom to have children and be mother to them, heck you can’t get a break from that job if you wanted one/needed one. So, there we go, Freedom. Freedom to hate yourself for being in love with a man who sees only how retirement and the money that comes from it will take care of all the problems that will be faced for the furture. I just honestly hope that it will have all been worth it. I’m proud of my husband, of his dedication to his job. It just drives me nuts that there is no dedication to anything that he does for the Navy. They’ve passed him up 5 times for making chief. And for some they say that it is because of their quota to promote so many minorities and woman. That they would pass up promoting a man that has never been late, that is always dependable, that would allow his wife to take herself to surgery and bring herself home because he didn’t want to put out someone else to have to take his duty day. When his wife BEGGED him to take time off that he just told her no he couldn’t. But, they still pass him up for advancement.

This has been 13+yrs of hell, and knowing that there is only 2 more left seems like it should be some comfort, but it doesn’t. Atleast it seemed up until the past 3 years that there was MAYBE a chance that he’d get out. That we could get away from this Warden the Navy. I would love to have the freedom of counting on someone. REALLY being able to depend on someone for help if I needed it. That is what I thought a man and wife were supposed to be for each other. The fact that the military makes it so a Husband and Wife can’t be that for each other pretty much takes away basic freedoms. For me if the wife doesn’t want to be a part of the husbands career than he should be allowed to have his career at shore duty rather than OUT in BFE Sea Duty, away from his family and responsibilities there. Sure he could have gotten out of the Navy, but than what. He would have rescented me for not supporting him to finish until retirement. I love him. I feel his frustration with me, his disappointment with me for not being “strong enough” to handle these times apart.

So, maybe you can now understand my hell that is my life. Live it as it is, alone, not ever being able to count on him for anything. Not being able to plan birthday parties, dinners, or even just a quiet time just the two of us sitting at home snuggling watching a few movies together. The kids can’t count on their Dad being there for them for school things, or even if they are sick and have to go to the ER.

I know, this life has no guarantees. I guess that’s why it hits me so hard. That all this time apart is wasted. It can never be regained. The memories have already been made without him here in them.

SO, anyway to my subject. I give up. I give up trying to being on a “Normal” sleep schedule. My life is not normal. I can’t have anything that I want. There has been nothing normal about my life for pretty much 13yrs. Nothing that could be counted on. Well, I guess there were the 3 years in the beginning. We had each other. I was working, we had a routine. Something I had never had. I could count on someone. I was part of something; we were a team. As soon as he was transfered off that first Shore Duty back to California and didn’t get out like we had talked about. My life ended, but the problem was. It wasn’t just my life anymore we had our son. I remember how much my Mom agonized about taking us kids away from our Dad. I couldn’t do that to Timothy. I couldn’t divorce Patrick because I NEVER saw him but on the weekends. That I was raising our son alone. I just kept thinking that Patrick would get out after this Sea Duty. We would get our time.

It all hurts to much to dregde through all the crap that leads up unto this time. To me sitting here pouring out my heart and angry to a dang computer because no one else will listen. Not even my husband can listen beucase he can do nothing about it. I have to be mental, which maybe I am now, for him to get to leave the ship and come home. I hate competing with the Navy for my husband. I always loose. I have never won any battle when it has come to a battle of weather he can stay home with me or have to go out on the DAMN FUCKIN SHIP. (Excuse my language, but i’m angry, constantly all consuming anger.) I cry and cry and cry. Than I feel a bit better, but I ALWAYS come back to this spot. I’m angry, I feel jipped, like i’ve been living someone elses life and that someday I will be set free to be FREE to live my life with team mate and we will be able to live our life together. I’m so frighted that when that time FINALLY comes we won’t know how to be a team. He won’t have the excuse to leave out to Sea anymore and he will be suck here with me and decide he doesn’t want me. I have been here waiting, stuck, not able to afford childcare so I can go to school, go to the gym, not being able to do any of the things I would like to do because I don’t even have the same opportuinites as a divorced woman. I don’t have low income child care, there are support groups for the “single” mother, but i’m not one even though I am often mothering ALONE. What am I. Who am I. I am a mother of 3 beautiful wonderful kids that want their Daddy. They want their Daddy so much it blinds them to the one parent they do have consistantly with them. They don’t worry about me leaving and not coming home for months at a time. They know that I will always be here for them. Which for me that is wonderful. It’s just sad that they can’t have that comfortableness of consistancy with their Father. That is one thing I wanted for my children that I NEVER had. I have had 4 step Dads. One of which I considered more my father than the others, maybe even more than my real Dad. Am I able to contact him, no, he’s dead. He loves his alchol more than he loved my mother or us kids. That time we moved right under his nose, a little at a time, until we were all moved out and he didn’t even notice until we were gone.

All these times that Patrick goes away, he takes a little bit of me with him. Over and over and over again, I am than left with this shell. Angry and bitter and loanly. Only purpose is to be a mother to my children, but than what kind of a mother am I being when I do nothing for myself. My children will grow up thinking that their mother was just a shell at thier beck and call. She had no other ambition or drive.

Maybe they will be right. I’ve figured out why I like to be awake when your asleep dear. I can be busy and somewhat happy at night when I know you are home safe in our bed, and than in the morning when you go off to work, I sleep. I sleep away the pain of not being able to be with you, share things with you, knowing that everyday is just one day closer to when you will be gone again for months. Also that impending fear that one of these times you will come back again with someone else in your heart. Maybe that is also what I am subconscicely pushing you to. If you choose than it will free me, and It will have been your choice not mine. The problem is, all i’ve ever wanted was to be with you, to live together, love together, raise our family together. I wanted to be a music major once. I used to be able to play, I used to LOVE to play for my own enjoyment. I used to draw, I used to love to draw. Now, all I do is wait.

Just imagine being in a cell, you can move around in this cell, the only walls are your resonsibilities, well, not exactly YOUR responsibilities they are your spouses so there for your own. The first few years in this cell aren’t too bad. You don’t even realize you are in a cell, that you aren’t fee. Than about 8yrs in you start to realize you have welts and lashing marks that you didn’t even realize you were getting. You realize that you are getting beaten down and beaten down every disappointment is another lash. You were once able to shurg them off you realize. Rise above them because you knew that they were supposed to end soon. By 10 yrs rolling around you realized they weren’t going to end. You would continue to have disappointments. The only good thing was that during this time you were given little angels. Your children to help you through. When they were so little you knew that things weren’t too bad. It wasn’t until your oldest in response to the first Shore Duty and his daddy being around all the time, your son asked everyday for a WHOLE month if Daddy would be home that day. YOu realized the lashes he had on him that were healing, slowly. Your oldest daughter was too young to have been hurt by the lashes yet, but it started to down on you that she too would feel them. And than your youngest. The things that were going on at the time you barely remember her first year. But now you do, things are better now with your husband, but still you look back over the time and feel every disappointment that hit yourself and each of your children in turn. You try and cusion the blows for your children, but as they get older you know it is in vain. They are strong children, they have to be. They too love thier Daddy and just try and remember the times that he’s been home, and that he won’t be gone “that” long. But for you it’s harder because you know it could change, you know that the lashes don’t just stop they keep coming, you’ve resigned yourself that they will never stop, because even though they don’t come from certain disappointments directly anymore they come from having to teach for instance, your daughter that “we can’t save a piece of pizza for Daddy for a whole month”. But than there is a part of me that wants to say “Yes we can, let’s freeze it”. But i’m afraid she doesn’t exsit anymore, or soon won’t.