Looking Forward

Looking Forward

I have never been one to dwell in the past. There are some things that bother me, some wounds that took longer to heal, but I chose not to focus on them, and rather, focus on the present.

I do not now, nor have I ever, done this out of some enlightened understanding gifted by higher wisdom. It has, for me, always been a survival strategy; if I wallowed in the past, I would be overwhelmed by hurt, pain, anger, all the unpleasantness that I so often hide from.

But my instinct to look forward, and not backward, is what, when it comes down to it, gets me through this deployment. Deployment is strengthening me, pushing me to find reserves of personal resolve and toughness I did not know I had. But when life overwhelms me, and threatens to break me, it is my refusal to live in the past that gets me through.

I can find the exact spot where we said goodbye. Where we had that last kiss, where he slipped through my fingers no matter how hard I held on. I can find that exact spot, a few stumbling steps away, where I watched him walk away, melding into a mass of digi-cam, boots and guns. I refuse to stand on either of those spots, I park in different parking lots, walk further distances; or waddle, as I don't have much of a walk anymore, I go out of my way to avoid those two spots, on gravel and asphalt. I refuse to live in that moment, it hurts too badly, the pain would break me and grind me to nothing.

On the first day I drug myself out of bed, showered, put on clothes, and faced the world after he left, I found myself drawn to the spot where he will come back. Where he will step onto the parade field, and I will impatiently wait through speeches and congratulations, where my life and his will start to meld all over again. In the late summer sun, I found the spot where I want to stand, kicked off my shoes, and stood in the grass. I stood there, and reminded myself that although God had not stopped the world from spinning before he left, he was not going to stop it this year either. The same sun that came up and took the Sergeant from me, is the same sun that will come up on the day he comes back.

I refuse to live in the dark of the moment of deployment. It is my survival instinct kicking in, forcing me out of the darkness of goodbye. Instead, I live for that moment, when I will stand with my toes curled in the grass, and my little girl in my arms, watching her father walk onto the parade grounds. The more I look forward, the faster the time goes by, the less I hurt, the more I learn to live in this moment, with all the good, the bad, and the in-between.

~Jennifer