Heavy hearted

I haven't written in a long time and so much has been going on both personally at home and overseas with my beloved. I'm not even sure how to express all that I'm thinking about right now. It seems like my children have been one big sickness after another and every time one of us is well another of us is down. I've been up to the hospital for one appointment or another 7 times since November. Fortunately, my youngest daughter seems to be in a good place for the moment, there is some concern that her eyes that were surgically corrected 2 years ago may need another realignment as she still has problems with it but that for now seems to be in the near to distant future and for the time being I'm choosing not to focus on that but rather the day to day.

It seems funny to me because I haven't written in a while and when I set up this account I was so go gung-ho, fully believing I'd write every day if not numerous times a day and yet it didn't take long for me to neglect it. I think primarily my reasoning was I am a very optimistic person by nature and when things get tough I rather keep it to myself than whine about it. I like to try to keep things lighthearted and full of laughter because I think that is in general the best medicine. But right now I'm at a total loss.

I have spent the last few weeks in an up and down pattern. One moment I'm feeling good about the future and the next I'm having tremendous doubts. My husband who has been in the service nearly 19 years is currently thinking about the possibility of retiring, he's had a hard road of things on this deployment that leaves him feeling like he's failing for the first time in his career. It's difficult for us spouses at home to hear these things from so far away with the knowledge that there is nothing we can offer. It broke my heart to hear him so disheartened and feeling so chewed up and spit out by his command. It's been at least a dozen years since I've seen him express these types of feelings and it's hard. I want to say to him go ahead retire we'll figure it out, but the reality is we have long thought we'd stay in at least another 5 years because as of right now our children are still small and 5 more years would put us in an excellent place for retirement financially. And now I feel like all my careful planning and my frugal spending habits are for naught and that our future is going to be hard given the state of the current economy and the fact that we'll have to repay some portion of his last re-enlistment bonus if he gets out early.

So as you can tell there are a lot of heavy issues on my brain right now as the above is just a portion of the pro/con conversation I seem to have with myself daily. My heart says get out and stay with us, especially with another pending deployment slated for next year. My brain says stick it out, make our plans reality. We've got grown up responsibilities, sometimes stuff sucks on the job regardless of your chosen career path. And I sit here in the knowledge that I can not have any kind of meaningful conversation with him regarding any of this until he's back home and we can talk face to face, which leaves me with these kind of pointless exercises in futilely arguing both pro and con with myself and keeping my mouth shut like a good little supportive military spouse. I don't mean to sound bitter by wording it that way, it's just the fact. If thinking about retirement gives him peace of mind where he's at right now there is no need for me to steal that sense of calm from him but right now it's at a cost to me. I never hold back when discussing things with him during deployment so this is a new chapter in my book.

I guess the good stuff is this. He sounds ever more dedicated to me, he's asked me probably 3 times since he's been gone to renew our wedding vows or take a couple vacation when he returns. He also speaks a lot about the things he wants to do with our children. And I suppose it bears mention that when I spoke to him last I made mention of something I wanted him to consider, he sent me a spreadsheet he'd worked on at work detailing his own list of pros and cons and had it worked down to our children's ages at different retirement dates. So clearly the man is thinking and trying to come to the best decision and I do admire him that. All in all, I guess I'll need to try to be more loyal to my blogging to at least purge some of my lengthy thought processes so I can come to him a little fresh and without all the weight of different thoughts weighing on me so I can be the wife he needs of me right now until he comes home in a couple of months.