Having To Give Up

I didn't grow up in a "military family". Sure, we supported the military and my family is very Southern, patriotic, and proud. I was raised on strong roots knowing that this life i live was paid for at a high cost of many lives. Looking back i can still remember sitting in my fifth grade classroom the day the twin towers fell. I remember it rocking my parents world. I knew very little about the military other than they protected our freedom and i was extremely naive to the casualty that is war. As far as i know the only military framed roots in my family were my cousin Tim who was a Marine vet and my second cousin Chance who was active duty Marine at the time. Thankfully in the sense that i never had to deal with it affecting my childhood i am blessed beyond all measures. September 11th merely shook us all up a little bit, but we still carried on with our day to day life. We weren't having to say goodbye to a loved one heading overseas to fight the war on terror. No one i knew was in the twin towers, the pentagon, or on any of the airplanes. To look back now at 23 i am so incredibly overwhelmed with emotion at how truly blessed my safe, little naive childhood was for me.

Now here i am at 23 in love with a Marine. I like to say that life has a funny was of mixing us all up and turning us around. I never in a million years would have dreamed i would be in the shoes that i am, but i also wouldn't know this love and pride and joy that i feel either, if i weren't. The struggle sets in now somewhere around my family and friends not understanding the military life. When God gave me Brendon, He was certainly looking out for me. From day one Brendon has made sure that i understood every abbreviation, acronym, term, title, what have you that he has used. When he explains things to me, he goes in to detail to make sure that i understand what he is talking about. If i have questions he patiently deals with me, doesn't get annoyed, and answers every single one. I have had the inside scoop at what this military life is all about and means from the very beginning and a first had account. My family on the other hand, they still don't get it. They get what i tell them and i try to have patience to explain things, but the fact of the matter is they don't live it, they don't get it.

When my brother met my sister in law she began hanging around more at my house. We all went to the same church, so they had mutual friends, it was a really open and public thing. Everyone got to know her easily, she lived close, she worked a normal job, people knew her. From the moment i let people into my world and went public that Brendon and i were serious and dating, the number one question i have received multiple times a day is, "when will we get to meet him?", "when is he coming to Virginia?", "why do you always have to travel to him?". It's hard and its beyond tough to explain to someone with no comprehension of how the military works why your boyfriend can't just pop on over to Virginia for a few days, why his leave time doesn't always get approved, why he gets sent all over God's green earth at the drop of a hat. They just don't understand and it makes it tough to live in a civilian life when people are constantly shooting questions at you that you want the answers to yourself. I mean i'd love to know when my boyfriends going to pop into Virginia and see me, but at the end of the day i'm not concerned about it. He has a job and he has a duty and if the only way i can see him is by hopping two planes and flying across the country to him, then by God that is what i will do.

I constantly feel stuck in a limbo between trying to live this military life with the one i love, to support him, help him, and love him, and live this civilian life. Its a never ending cycle and most days its just sheer exhausting. MILSO's tell me all the time to not stress it, that it truly is one of those things that no one will understand until they live it, but man alive is it ever hard. I want my family and friends to understand. I want them to know that i am not just keeping Brendon from them on purpose. I want them to understand that this entire life is out of mine or his hands. I want them to understand that as cliche as it may be, he swore to protect my freedom and i swore to protect his heart, and like the title of this blog my life now revolves around where one word leads.

Just this morning i was laying in bed pondering over all of this and i came to the conclusion that i am going to have to just give it up. I can't humanly force someone to understand something that they either don't want to understand or can't understand because there is no relevance to them. My life now is my career and my guy. My focus needs to remain on those and put the stress of all the other things aside that i don't need to worry about. I'm at peace tonight as i type this.