Adventures Cringing at My Stupider Self

Here is an old draft I came accross, that's dated about Winter of 2011.

T-mius 6 months left in the military life. I will not be sorry to leave it behind. I've always been pretty vocal about how much it sucks to have my husband work for 16 hours a day, to have to leave at a moments notice for weeks, sometimes months, to never be able to put down roots, because Uncle Sam at any moment could pull them up, to have to live the life as a single parent every other year for 12 months. Sucks. So having less then a year to go, I foolishly thought Steven would be off the hook.

FAIL.

Next Friday he's going to Yakima for 16 days. 16 DAYS. 16 days of juggling three boys, a house, a cat, and school alone. Now, 16 days may seem like a cake walk compard to the te months I did last year. But last year, I was going to school on campus, not online, and had adult interaction regularly. 

What a whiny little bia I sounded like. Thank God that post was never published. If I could come face-to-face with the person who wrote those words (myself, only dumber) I would slap myself so hard. Since Steven has left active duty, and joined the Reserves, he's had to take four extended assignments that have taken him away from home, most of them have been for two weeks at a time. The shortest was 9 days. Having him away wasn't fun, I'll admit, but knowing that the bills would be paid that month, made it tolerable.

Maybe this is Karma, kicking my ass. Maybe I just complained one too many times, and now I am paying for it. Maybe I just didn't appreciate what I really had. Boy has that changed. Now I feel nothing but gratitude for what I have. The only negative feeling I have in my life at this point is fear that the life I have is going to be taken away because of my bad attitude. Like I said in my pervious post, staying positive is now the ultimate goal, because I tried being a bitter little bitch who put her own needs over her husband's career, and that did not work out so well.

The Difficult Adventure of Staying Positive.

I know, I know, it's kind of a cliche. Stay positive. It's what people here when something really bad has happened to them. It's the kind of thing you here only when it's really, really hard to stay positive. No one needs a reminder when things are going great.

It's what I told myself the for ten months when my husband deployed. Day after day, I had to shuttle my pregnant self, and two small kids out of the house on time to get them to school/daycare, and myself to class. I had to go to my classes, and be a college student in my last semester. Food, laundry, household chores, displine, keeping the kids entertained and happy in a time of stress, keeping myself sane, and putting the many worrisome thoughts I had about my husband being in a war zone in the back of my mind; all these things fell on my shoulders. And I told myself to stay positive; this situation may be hard, but it's temporary.

Now, I find myself two and a half years later, struggling to keep that same attitute that got me through those hard months. The problem is, I didn't plan for the senrio that we're in. I was so naive, I didn't expect my husband to see a year come and go and not a single full-time job to show for it. But that's our reality. It sucks, but it is what it is.

To say that unemploymen/underemployment affects every aspect of a family's life is an understatment. It seeps into every nook and cranny of our lives; marriage, kids, house, activities, our cat, our relationships with our out-of-state friends and family, transportation, EVERYTHING. This burden has slowly, with every passing month become heavier and heaiver, and now it's starting to feel so heavy that getting out from under it seems an impossible task. But this is crutial moment. Now we're at point where we could let the burden of unemployment crush us completely, and watch everything we've worked six years to build crumble.

Or we could stay positive.

We can do absolutly everything in our power to make sure every penny is accounted for, and pay everyone of our bills ontime.

We can look for help where ever it is avalible.

My husband can take mosre assingments (even when they are away from home).

We can make sure his resume and my business are getting plenty of healthy circulation.

But most importantly, we can look around at everything we still have, and remember how increadblly lucky we are to have everything we have (including a severence fund that has sustainted us for the past 7 months, and will continue to do so for another 9 months). We have a roof over our head, two vehicles that are complely paid off, a rental property that generates precious income (however small it may be), three increabily beautiful children, who light up our lives every day. We have health and dental insurance (even though it takes a very big chuck out of my husband's measly Army Reserve salary), which has already paid for itself ten times over.

All these things are a blessing. Not everyone is as lucky as we are, and my heart goes out to those families who are not as fortunate; it's easy than ever for me to have a well of empathy for those individuals.

This situation is temorary. My husband will not be devoid of a full time job forever. I will eventually eroll children for my daycare business, and we will get back to the fiancial stability we had a year ago. And for these reasons, complaining about our situation just isn't right. So I am only going to maintain the most positive outlook on our situation, no matter how heavy the situation my seem.