As you may or may not know, my husband is in the United States Marine Corps. He is a wonderful and wonderfully handsome Marine if I do say so myself. He is a Marine that has been enlisted for over four years and thankfully has never been deployed. This means, other than before we were married (and when I went to boot camp and AIT for 4.5 months in early 2008) we have never been apart. And no sea has ever separated us. No international calling card has ever been required. I praise God everyday for that.
Recently in light of our indebtedness we have discussed re-enlistment. This option came with the impending doom that yes I would actually go through a deployment. But I prayed that I would not. I prayed that my husband would be a constant physical part of our family and get to watch his daughter grow in a time when they change the most. Unfortunately, God has other plans for our family.
My husband is most likely deploying sometime early next year to Afghanistan. FOR 14 MONTHS! (let me say a "normal" Marine Corps deployment is 7 months.) He will leave mere months after his only child, Maggie, turns 1 and not see her for more than 3 weeks until after she her second birthday. He will be granted R&R leave during his deployment for no more than 3 weeks.
This deployment is pretty much optional. If my husband did not want to go so badly he could choose to not re-enlist and therefore be ineligible for the deployment (he gets out in the middle of the deployment which is not allowed). So my husband is basically volunteering to leave his family for over a year. I am not mad at him because I know that this is important to him, to "serve" his country this way, but makes the 14 month deployment harder to swallow. Much harder to swallow.
He will hopefully be in a "secure" job doing administrative duties while deployed but this is not certain yet. We should know in the next two weeks or so exactly what is going on. But it is not his job that worries me, it is the separation that will take place between himself and his daughter that I worry about most. He will most likely miss the early stages of talking, potty training, and much more toddler exploration.
I have already decided though that if my husband does in fact deploy, I am moving home to Florida to be with my parents. They will be able to help raise my daughter for those 14 months, and allow my husband and I to focus on paying off debt much quicker than we had hoped. Leaving almost (consumer) debt free by the time he returns. My parents live in a 4 bedroom house so both my daughter and I will have our "own" rooms. My niece will also be graduating during this time frame leaving the house one less occupant lighter (she is joining a branch of service, she doesn't know which one yet).
This move will not only help my husband and I, but it will financially help my parents as well. We have already discussed the possibility and how I can pay "rent" to them. I will be buying all of the groceries for the family of 4 or 5 (depending on if it before my niece graduates or after), leaving their check books $600-700 dollars heavier each month, which is huge to my parents who are struggling to keep their heads above water. This works out because it will be my only "homely" expense.
And did I mention that although my husband is about to leave for 14 months, upon his arrival we will be close to being debt free. This is huge for me and would not be so understanding of this deployment if this fact were not so. Being debt free or almost debt free will mainly depend on if I am able to find gainful part time employment while living in Florida or not. I hope that I am because all of my friends that have gone through deployments have said that the time went faster when they worked than when it did not.
And as I reread this post, I find that I am talking about this deployment in a tone happier or more optimistic than I feel in my heart. I guess that although there are upsides to the deployment, the idea that I will be apart from my husband while he is in a war zone scars me to depths of my soul and I cannot imagine the heartbreak I will feel showing my husband pictures and videos of our daughter growing. And I will carry a burden that will be to make sure that my daughter does not forget her father in the time that he is gone. I am already scouring message boards and deployment websites for ways to keep him an integrated part of our life even with a sea separating our family.
No one can imagine the pain that goes through someone's heart and mind when they find out news such as this, unless one has been there before. And I have not been here before and so my heart and my soul and my mind ache trying to fathom 14 months without my husband, without the father of our child, without my companion.
I am scared. And I already feel isolated and alone.
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