I was under the illusion that with the divorce I was putting behind me the life as a military wife. I had only been in three years and had never grown to really love it. Sure, I had my moments of pride and honor as well as my moments of sadness but I felt mostly like the adult who had to make sure all of my family was taken care of. I spent the majority of the last three years home alone raising our kids, he was gone for nine months at first, then weeks at a time, then off and unavailable literally due to his surgery for 4 weeks. Then he was gone again for weeks at a time with various trainings and whatnot and then the last year, he was gone to the affairs.
I had a great friend once tell me that being a military wife is so much more manageable when you have a spouse that comes home and you know you are the only apple in his eyes and I think that probably holds a lot to what my feelings regarding military life are. I'm pretty sure she's correct. I always felt as if the military was his escape, and yet I still willingly supported it because I knew how happy it made him, how proud I was that I was in a way serving our country (I'd always wanted to join myself but once the children came along it became something that seemed impossible) and I saw the pride in my children when telling their friends that their daddy was a soldier or when he came home in his ACU's. And so I stuck with it.
But when I first realized we were divorcing I was relieved, no scratch that, ecstatic to be ditching the whole military wife title. When he first went in I refused to identity myself as a Proud Army Wife or a PAW, because I was not in fact married to the Army. I had met my husband, we had been together, born children together and shared eight years together on our own before he ever enlisted into the military. My husband was not the property of the United States Army. I was not married to the United States Army. I was not a wife of the Army. I was a woman who had fallen in love with a man, started a life and a family and then loaned my husband to the army. At times I was resentful, not of him serving but of the strict life changes that happen. The military is meant for young kids fresh out of high school to join. It is in no way, shape or form set up or run for completed families who have lived successful careers to up and join 8 years into a 'civilian' lifestyle. It's quite the culture shock from the severe dock in pay, the new lifestyle, the foreign language and alternative 'hurry up and wait' mantra. It truly is a whole new lifestyle and one that I imagine is much easier to get use to when you don't have numerous dependents and thousands of dollars of debt to carry in with you.
And so the divorce meant, NO MORE MILITARY WIFE BS. I could go back to my ways of being a woman, a mother, a human not having to worry if her husband was home or not and undertake my new role as an ex-wife. I would no longer have to have my spouse come home and with a somber face explain to me he had another last minute trip, or how drill had been changed to 5 days instead of just 2, I would no longer scratch my head and wonder, "so much for 2 weeks and one weekend a year, he's gone more than 1/2 the month these days". I would no longer have to 'answer' to the military and could get away from the whole 'hurry up and wait' lifestyle that seems to encompass the military. I could stop living my life by the military clock.
And yet, last night I found myself falling into the military wife role. STBX and I still live together as that's what's best for the kids. This weekend was his drill weekend and he had a class A inspection this morning at 0'dark thirty. STBX tried on his class A's, something I've ironically never seen him in, as they are needed very rarely in the National Guard. And I found myself quietly pondering that this was the life I was suppose to be living. There he sat, looking amazing and proud in his class A's and I had always wanted to see him in them. And I could see the panic and the time crunch in his eyes. He'd willingly spent the last hour with our DS after driving for over an hour to come back home and help me with the kids. He had no ill intent, no desire to manipulate me and use the kids, he just genuinely missed the kids and knew that me pulling 'extra duty' on the weekend was no fun especially with yet another upcoming trip for the Guard.
And it was well after 11 pm and he had to pin and set his entire class A's. So I told him to give me his book and let me try while he rocked our DS. And I set to it. And that's when it hit me. This military wife thing, it never goes away. If you have kids with the spouse who serves in the military, even when you divorce it's still a lifestyle you live. For me last night, it was simply helping him get his uniform done in time (which i ended up not being much help and only handled the lapels before DS made it clear he needed more than his dad). But this is a lifetime commitment. Divorce does not erase it, it will never go away. EVER. When he deploys, I'll be the one at home still raising the kids on my own . . . but this time without the joy of him coming home to my arms. When he goes out on missions, I will STILL have my heart in my chest hoping and praying he comes home. Just no longer to me, but instead hoping he comes home to his children. I may not be married to him for much longer, but I'll still be holding my breath, crossing my fingers, supporting, berating and living the life of a military wife. Because his successes and failures in the military directly impact the lives of my children and the happiness of the man I so desperately loved. His deployments will be the deployments of my children and the time frame when i'm once again truly a single mom. His promotions, his set backs they all are a part of my life because they impact my children. They impact where he goes, how long he goes and how often he goes.
I will never stop being a military wife. I only lived it three short years and our 'deployment' was simply just a nine month training. But I understand it, I lived it, i know it. I know the military. I know the ways of life and the fact that I thought I'd be done with it is simply not the truth. For the rest of our lives as long as he decides his calling is that of a soldier, I will be there through all of this because of the impact it has on him and my children. I'm sure it will be even more weird once he remarries . . . but for right now I'm just coming to peace with the fact that this is not a part of my life that I'm able to erase. Instead it's one I finally need to come to terms with.
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