The new normal

So many people have said that I should be happy that my life is back to normal. I am so happy my husband is home safe. What they don't understand that for 10 months my normal was having a deployed husband. Before that my normal was having a husband that I only was able to see for a couple days a month because he was in AIT and before that he was in BCT so the only form of communication we had was the old fashion writing letters and sending them through the mail. We have not had a "normal" marriage like people with no affiliation to the military have.

At homecoming the MFLC (Military Family Life Councilor) asked me how long I had been married. My response to that was 2 years legally, but it only feels like 6 months because that is all we have been together. Those 6 months weren't even consecutive, that is a couple weeks here and a month there.

My new normal is now having a husband that I have been with for 6 years that sometimes I don't feel like I know who he is anymore. His new normal is feeling like a stranger to his own wife. That is all stuff that we have to work through and we will find yet again a new normal for us, only then to adapt to yet another change whether it be another deployment or a PCS or maybe even something totally different that I have not even considered yet.

I was told that I should be relieved that he is home. Yes I am relieved, my husband walked off that plane and didn't come home any other way. But this war doesn't stop because he is home. 2 days after he came home I got word that a friend had been KIA. How can anyone be relieved that they have to tell their husband that a friend had died? How can anyone be relieved that in a few short months her husband will be training to go back to the same hell that he just came home from?

Did I know what I was getting into? Yes I did. I know all the possibilities of being married to a man in the military, the good the bad and the ugly. Was I prepared for this? I like to think I was as prepared as one can be that has never had to experience any of this. I hope next deployment I am a little bit more prepared because I know what to expect.

I guess the whole point of this rambling is that I don't need people telling me I should be this or I should be that. I am not them, I have not walked in their shoes nor have they in mine. I am full of emotions at this point in time and I have to be the one to work through them. I don't need someone that hardly knows me and/or has never taken the time to get to know me tell me how I should feel or what I should do. What I need is for people to keep their opinions to themselves and let me and J figure it out on our own, because I can promise that we will figure out what is best for us long before anyone else will.