Mining, Part 2

I’ve been rather blah about life here lately. And I have so much to be thankful for, so many blessings. One of whom is kicking and rolling around, and pushing into my ribs as I type.

I have this excel spreadsheet on my desktop, the famous Doughnut of Misery, and after putting in approximate dates, it gives me a percentage of how much time is left. For a long time, the number was high. Depressingly high. I started out checking it every day, my laptop in my lap before I even rolled out of bed, anxiously checking the number, praying that somehow, magically, the percentage would drop to a better number. Every day, when it hadn’t, when the left-to-go percentage remained in the 90% range, it was a painful slap in the face.

In the end, I deleted it, it was hurting me to watch those numbers creep with the agonizing slowness of cold molasses in winter. For months, I have refused to do the math myself, or to download that spreadsheet once more. I have refused to count the days of deployment.

Instead I counted the days as my child got bigger. Counted each week, celebrated each milestone, finding out it was a girl, letting everyone know that my new recruit is Layla, I’ve listened to her heartbeat when I could not sleep, folded and refolded baby clothes, looked at furniture, picked out bedding, I’ve taken more pictures of myself in the bathroom mirror, than I ever thought possible. I mailed Carl a pair of her socks, so he could keep them with him, to see how tiny she will be when she finally makes her appearance. I’ve read to her, talked to her, wished she would get out of my ribs, only to desperately wish she would get off my bladder.

The other night, I downloaded the Doughnut of Misery once more. And opened it. Much to my utter shock, the done portion of deployment now sits somewhere around 60%, the to go portion is accordingly, around 40%. It took several minutes for me to realize, I have survived the first half of deployment.

I’m still standing. I’m wobbly, I cry when life gets to be too much, I still struggle with sleeping at night, I don’t like being alone. I wake up in the morning, and for a brief moment, in that hazy place between sleep and awake, I can nearly feel him, nearly hear him breathe. But… I’m still standing, I’m still here. I still keep the faith, still keep a light burning when everything goes dark.

Every morning, I pull his tags around my head, and slide them under my shirt. On the hard days I wear his cologne, on the really hard days I wear his shirt too. But no matter how hard the day, or rough the night, I find myself facing the day.

I said it before, and I will stay it once more, this deployment is pulling the strongest in me, the toughest within me, from the deepest parts of me. It’s painfully mining for the best of me, to get me through the hard day, and the worst of times.

I’m halfway through my transition, from the girl I was before, to Army Wife. To fiercely independent, stand on my own two feet, open my own door, Army Wife.

~Jennifer