The At Home Mamma

My life is chaos... complete and utter chaos. This life that I'm living has warped and destroyed the image of what I thought my life would be at the age of 26. I was supposed to be living my dream life in Tennessee. I was supposed to be a college graduate doing something "amazing". I really don't feel "amazing" as I'm writing this in yesterday's sweat pants, a grungy t-shirt and unwashed hair. I haven't showered in three days. I have a teething six month old little boy who needs my constant attention. I have a husband who works his ass off so that I am able to stay home with our little boy. I quite my job as a veterinary technician where I had worked for five years to live out this "fantasy" of being a stay at home mom and house wife.

After reading that paragraph, I have to reassure you, I LOVE my son, I LOVE my husband, and I LOVE our life, however, damn is it hard sometimes.

I guess I will start at the beginning. Let us walk down memory lane to six years ago when I first moved back home after I broke up with my live-in boyfriend of four years. No real drama story there. We were just two different people that wanted different things out of life. After moving back home, I wanted an easy job while I was going to school. I applied to several places in my home town and was hired at a local pizza joint. My boss was this skinny nineteen year old kid with glasses and an attitude. He was kind of an asshole. Well.. that kid is now my husband. We were instantly drawn to eachother. I'm not sure if it was our energies and actual attraction or the fact that we were both fresh out of relationships and looking for rebounds. Regardless, we started flirting with eachother at work and eventually exchanged numbers. We had played with the idea of "getting together" and decided that Christmas Eve of 2016 was as good of a night as any. We had both worked together that night and went our separate ways after our shift ended. After some convicing on both parts, we met back up in the parking lot of our work. I lived at home with my parents and was not too keen on bringing a booty call back home. He had a roomate (who also worked with us) and we weren't ready to share our "relationship" at that point so we had to wait until his roomate fell asleep before we could go back to his apartment. We sat in my Jeep in the parking lot of our work for HOURS. We talked, we laughed, we shared stories, we listened to music, we got to know eachother. It was amazing. We shared a true connection and our first kiss in that Jeep. We went back to his apartment and did a little more than kiss.. okay, we had sex. Unprotected sex, mind you. What in the hell is wrong with me? Okay, anyways a few months go by and we continued our "relationship" and getting to know eachother, in secret. In April of 2017, he gave me a key to his apartment and in June of 2017, me and my two cats moved in. I was 21 years old and he was 20. We were young and dumb and fought about young and dumb things. He still had communications with his exes, which I only found out about by going through his phone. No, I am not saying what I did was right by invading his privacy, but I found what I found and I spoke up about it. I am not the jealous type, per say, but I do have boundaries. I'm not a fan of communicating with exes, especially behind your significant other's back. Especially when said ex is a pretty little blonde thing and I am a thick brunette with an attitude problem. It was that fight that I found out about his anger issues. We got into a yelling match and he ended up throwing his phone across our bedroom and completely shattering it. Talk about overreacting...

Moving on. We worked through that issue and went about our lives. In December of 2017 we found a new and cheaper apartment (without the piece of shit roomate). We moved into our first actual apartment together in the dead of winter. It was a super cute, two bedroom apartment, with a homey feel on a dirt road in a tiny village. We were happy. We had discussed our futures and what we wanted out of life. Back tracking a little here, my husband has talked about joining the military since the day I met him. He has always wanted to join the Air Force, but because of his health issues (ADHD and asthma), they would not allow him to sign up. A marine recruiter, however, reached out and said that he would have no problem enlisting with the Marines. While it was not his first choice, he still signed that dotted line. He left for boot camp on April 10th, 2018. He left me. He would be gone for 13 weeks. I would live by myself in an empty apartment and be forced to figure out living on my own for the very first time. I went with his parents to the recruiting station where he signed a six year contract and left on a bus. That was by far one of the worst days of my life. To watch him sign his life away, our life away, was soul crushing, but I knew this was something he needed to do. I was afraid that if he didn't get to do this that he would forever resent me for staying home. I could not live with that guilt and so I supported him and kissed him goodbye. Days had passed before I had gotten any information at all in regards to his whereabouts. I received his address and from there was able to write to him daily. He could not respond as quickly, but receiving his letters were the reminders that I needed to know that our relationship was worth it. It was worth the sleepless nights by myself. It was worth the countless tears shed wondering what hell he was going through there. It was worth the feeling of abandonment.

I had received a phone call from his mother at work one morning. Finding that extremely odd, I went outside and called her back. He was coming home. The 13 weeks had not yet approached, but for some reason he was coming home. I was beyond excited and yet, I was terrified. Why was he coming home early? What happened? Would he come home the same person? Was I still the same person? Does he still love me? Would he still find me attractive? Those thoughts pushed aside, I spoke to his mom and worked out the details of when we could go pick him up from the airport.

A week later, on May 10, 2018, we arrived at the airport in the late evening. We waited, for what seemed like forever, for him to walk down that staircase. When he did finally walk towards us, I no longer recognized the man in front of me. My worst fears were coming true. He was very thin, tan, and had a very deep raspy voice. It felt like I was hugging a stranger. Even his demeanor was different. He was a broken man trying to bring himself back to reality.

The reality was, he was different, he felt like a failure, and our relationship was going to suffer because of it. The fear and abondment that I felt while he was gone was nothing compared to the horrors that I went through when he came home.