Fiasco

I’ve always said that I’d never date another person in the military again, and for good damn reason, too. I’ve been the wag that had to wait for her man to come home from war, and I’ve also been the wag that had to deal with (almost) the absolute WORST of military life. I’ve been in the War Zone myself, and I’ve got my own crosses to bear as far as that’s concerned. Now, that was a fiasco. 

I’ve never really had the greatest experiences with military folks, despite my absolute love of the uniform and way of life. It’s the kind of life you need to experience for yourself; you can’t explain it to someone. It’s exciting and terrifying, fun but fucking horrendous, planned but somehow still unpredictable.

It’s the kind of life you live once, then never repeat again.

But…

Well, here we are.

“I might need to go to the War Zone,” One Ball told me.

My heart sank right to the floor. Here we go again.

History has shown that I don’t do very well with the whole sit-and-wait business. I can’t do it. Anxiety and fear consume me, so I do everything in my power to prevent them from setting in. I work until I almost fall over from exhaustion… or drink until it’s impossible to gulp down another drop, which then makes me slutty/violent/terribly bad-tempered.

That’s part of the reason why I ended up in the War Zone in the first place. Not the only reason, but definitely a big part of it. I couldn’t just sit and wait. I don’t have it in me to do that. There are only so many times you can hear about another dead soldier, then panic as the subsequent communication blackout leaves you incapable of finding out if it was your soldier.

“When will you find out?” I asked OB.

“This week.”

“And when will you need to go?” I asked next.

“Couple of weeks.”

Fuck.

We knew the War Zone was a possibility, but neither of us thought that it would actually become a reality. The joys of living in a happy little fuck-bubble, I guess.

He called me before anyone else. It felt both great and shit at the same time – great that I’m such a big part of his life that he called me first with big, life-changing news. At the same time, though, I hated every word, every second of the phone call. It felt shit then, and I still feel like shit now.

Six months. That’s how long he’ll be gone. I mean, I knew that already; this isn’t my first rodeo. But can we survive that? We haven’t been together that long yet, and we’ll be celebrating our one-year anniversary when he comes back. Are we strong enough for six months apart already? Can we really make it through that? After the lies and bullshit that KEPT setting us back… are we really capable of making it through a six-month long-distance relationship?

Him going also means that we need to get “serious” quicker than I’d like, too. We need to make decisions that I thought we’d have longer to make. Do we want to stay together for the next six months AT LEAST? Should we part ways now, if not? The absolute last thing I’d want to do is break up with my boyfriend while he’s in a literal war zone.

It was bad enough breaking up with my husband while he was in a literal war zone…

But that’s definitely another story for another day.

What a fucking fiasco. Things were going so well, so it was about time that things imploded. That’s the way these things go, right?

Sigh. Watch this space, friends. I might be single by the end of the week.

The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: Grey is Back.