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I was so suprised to see how well people responded to this blog...it was encouraging! Some people might think that I am burdening my husband by letting my emotions out there, I am stressing him out by me stressing, well just so you all know, he doesn't know how I am feeling or the hard time that I am having! With his job he needs a clear mind and not be thinking of home or if I am ok, or how the girls are doing. I write him everynight telling him the things I did that day, but I leave out the tears that were shed...I don't want to be a distraction to him, so I will be a distraction to other people, you will hear that I have good days and I have bad days, there will be ups and there will be downs! My husband left one week ago tonight...I feel like if I could go back and do it all over again, would I make sure we had everything picked up and everything delt with before he left or would I just want to sit on the couch in his arms playing with the girls, not worrying a bit about that prescription I need to pick up so I don't have to sit at the hospital for hours on end with the girls alone! It's funny how mean or angry we can get with the ones we love and are closest to, but the second they leave we wish we could take back all of those things we said or did...when he comes home will it be different? Will I not be mean, or say mean things just to be hurtful? Will I feel differently because of all the time we have lost together? I have never been an emotional person, ya there has been a time here or there that I have been angry or hurt, but never a crier (other than the day I left my girls at the hospital, only a tear or two)...but one week ago today it started, I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes as he called his family one last time to say goodbye, as he packed his things, as he got his motorcycle ready for 7 months alone. Then the time came for us to leave (1 a.m.), we packed up the girls and we headed to were he needed to be...we sat around till about 5 am and then they started telling us we needed to move our cars so the buses could load up all of their stuff, I didn't want to be trapped in the back of a pile of cars and not be able to get out knowing that the girls needed to get home and get some rest! As we started to say goodbye I went from my husband never seeing me cry, a non emotional person, to absolutely losing it, in a matter of seconds! I told him I can't do it as he told me I can, as tears started to well up in his eyes knowing this would be the last kiss for me and the girls for the next 7 months, it made me cry harder and I couldn't handle it anymore! As I drove away the fear started to sink in, the what if's began...What if I just left him there and I never see him again? What if I didn't hear from him for who knows how long? They kept coming and coming...the fear of the unknown was too much for me to handle! I have heard from him a couple times since he left, they are still doing classes so he has been able to call twice, as he asks me how I am doing I hold back the tears and the trembling voice as I tell him all is good, everything is great! I don't want him to know the fear that I have in my heart and that life as I know it is so different and so hard without him...I tell him I have a routine now when really my routine is worrying! I am sure everyone has heard the saying that the wives have the hardest job in the military...that's absolutely not true....we just have the worst job! Our husbands go off to fight a war, leave their families and what they know to no showers, bad connections, mre's, sweat, sand, no ice....they have the hard job. This almost week now, has been cloudy and rainy almost everyday, today is a beautiful sunny crisp cool day out...I thought that the cloudy rainy ones would be the hardest and as it turns out they were, but today I sit here thinking if he was home, we would be out having fun, taking the girls to the park or taking a walk...not sitting inside wallowing in self pity and wondering what I am going to do ALL day! I find myself wandering around this house as if I don't know where things are, who's house is this? A lost little puppy dog not knowing how to get home, just plain LOST! I think about other wives and what they do, do we all think the same? In the absence of family, they would be my family, in the absence of my mate, they would become my soul's support. But more than anything other wives are fellow travelers who understand, where so many other people simply can't. The relationship between military wives is a sisterhood, we need each other. I have come to see how much love and support I have around me, from other wives who have been through it, to the ones who are going through it with me!