Pre-Deployment

This blog started out as a way that I could share my photographs with friends and family, which I haven't done since 2014-- so clearly that's working out.

Things have changed quite a bit since the last post. 

I am no longer 24. 

I am no longer living in Eugene, Oregon.  

I am no longer taking quite as many photographs of my dogs.    

And I am no longer studying Russian, although that wouldn't be such a bad idea now.  

Currently:

I am 27.

I am living back in my hometown of Austin, Texas.  

I am the momma of pups Tucker & Augie.  

I am working as Director of Media for my brother's two bars in downtown Austin.  

I am dating the love of my life.  

And I am preparing to conquer a 9 month deployment.  

Deployment is still a month or so away but with drill, classes, and annual training I have slowly but surely become acquainted with the mistress (a term for the army coined by Angela Rickett in her book No Man's War: Irreverent Confessions of an Infantry Wife) and the ups and the downs that accompany her.  Coming from a family who has no ties to the military, other than to the generation who honorably fought in WWII, it has been an eye-opening experience to dive into this other world.  

During WWII everyone was touched by war, directly or indirectly.  No one escaped.  Whether that meant dealing with a deployment, facing the death of a friend, or having a mother leave the house to jump into the workforce, no one survived WWII unscathed.  Today that couldn't be farther from the truth.  We, as US citizens, are so far removed from war and the daily impacts that it has on individuals and their families.  We have the ability to turn it on and off.  We don't deal with shortages in the grocery stores and there are no national efforts to come together to support our troops.  Consequently, we rarely think about those who are deployed, what that means, and what that actually looks like day-to-day for the individual deployed and for the family of that service member.  We catch the nightly news, and see a 1 1/2 minute sound bite about a helicopter that has gone down in Hawaii or a story about a Navy Seal who has been killed in an operation, but do the realities of these tragedies truly sink in?  Are we genuinely affected when these stories air or do we move on seconds later to the next thing that has popped up on our Facebook Newsfeed?  We take for granted the fact that we have the freedom to be outraged by a different story every five minutes.  Meanwhile the service members who are putting their lives and the lives of their families on the line to protect the liberties of you and me are rarely given the recognition and positive thoughts they deserve.  

I, myself, know that I have been guilty of all of these things.  That is until 9 months ago when Adam walked into my life.  

When he told me last December on our third date that he would be deployed later the next year I really didn't know what that meant.  Not that I didn't know what a deployment was, but I really had no idea what a deployment entailed and what the reality of a deployment would mean for our relationship and the two of us as individuals.  All I knew was that I really liked this guy and I wanted to see where our relationship would take us.  Deployment felt like years away.

Here are a few things I was completely oblivious to before dating Adam:

I had no idea that a deployment didn't only include the actual time that Adam would be overseas but also the time that accounted for training and mobilization.  I didn't realize that two weeks apart could mean a total of 15 minutes on the phone.  I didn't realize that travel plans could change at the drop of a pin, or quite literally at the the answer of a phone call.  I didn't realize that we might only have 57 hours together between obligations.  I didn't realize that departure days would be so stressful and that during the days following I would feel so low.  I didn't realize that the anticipation of deployment would be so emotional.  None of this did I realize until now.   

Now that I have come to terms with a few of the challenges that face us, I recognize that I will need an outlet during this next year.  Long story short this blog will be the landfill for all of my feelings during the next nine months.  I may write often or I may write only once every month or so depending on how I feel.  Follow along or don't, but this will be a space for me that I know I will need.