Context

When I was 20 I married a Marine. When I was 27 we got divorced, but this story isn't about that. This story is about when I was 20 and I married a Marine.

He proposed after two years of dating. I thought I knew everything. I thought I was ready to take on the world. I thought I was all grown up. Promptly after proposing, he left for boot camp. Three months later he came home a different man. Actually, I'll amend that. Three months later he came home a man. He grew up a lot in that three months. I planned a wedding. Twenty-four hours after he got home we walked down the aisle and got married. Four days after that he left again for more training. I spent my honeymoon at Lake Tahoe with my parents. The "me now" wants to kick the "me then"'s ass. I was stupid. But that's not really the point of the story either, just background for context.

See, over the course of the next four years he was gone for about two and a half of them. Over that time I moved us three separate times to three separate states. I finagled with CO's and hospitals. I harassed banks and loan companies. I managed to squirl away enough money so we could buy a house when he got home. I played Martha Stewart. I learned how to cook. I learned how to sew. I cleaned every square inch of my house every week. My entire life revolved around his deployments and returns.

While he was gone, he did man things. He saw a stripper in Japan slice a banana with her vagina. He got a blow job from a toothless whore. He had a girlfriend in Guam for a while. And when I was busy buying our first home with matching linens, he had a girlfriend in California too. At the time, I just expected that to be what Marines did when they were overseas. That's what I heard they all did. I later learned they didn't all do that. I later learned that this was an ongoing pattern of behavior that did not end when his enlistment expired. His behavior never ended, but the marriage did. Again, this is not really the point of the story either, just background for context.

I believe that all lessons in life repeat themselves until they are learned. I don't know why I believe this, but I do. I find myself now, more than ten years later, facing a very similar situation. Not the SAME situation by any stretch of the imagination, but similar. I just haven't figured out what the lesson is that I am supposed to be learning.

The distance thing doesn't scare me. The time apart doesn't scare me. I can deal with both of those things. I really can. What scares me is that I don't know what it is for. I don't want to set myself up for another repeat of the toothless whore incident again. I don't want to go through the "Hi, this is his girlfriend from California" conversation again. Then again, in theory he's free to do what he wants...right?

I know it all comes back down to the "now what" conversation. The "he won't make any promises he can't keep" but "I don't really want promises, I just want reassurances" conversation. The "we've got years of this ahead of us" conversation, mixed with the "I'm not giving up because you are one of a kind" conversation. The "I don't know what to tell you" and the "I don't know what you want to hear" conversation. The "all I know with certainty is that I love you more than I ever knew possible" and the "you have taught me to believe in things I had convinced myself I couldn't believe in anymore" conversation.

And the resolution to the conversation? I don't know. I don't know what I want it to be. I want him to tell me he is working towards a goal in life that includes me. I want to tell him that I'm in a holding pattern until he is in a place where we can be together. I want him to tell me that when the time is right things will be different. I want to tell him that when things are different I will be here.

But I know him. I know how he thinks. I know how he reacts. And I know what's going through his head. I know he loves me. And in his warped view of life, I know that he thinks the best thing is just to let it go. Let me go. Let it all go. That somehow this will be easier on me, or on him, or on both of us. I don't know what to say to that other than...no.