While I'd love to forget this section of time, I realize how important it is to document these months.
During this time, Gentry and I were still living apart, making the time to see each other every weekend.
As I look back at some journal entries from that time, I can feel how much pain there was from not being able to be with my eternal companion. Now that it's passed, it seems like the small blip of life that everyone told us it would be, but I never could quite believe until it was over. It was the longest year of my life, and while I continued to tell myself that I'd try and be as happy as I could be throughout the week and live life to the fullest, it just wasn't the same.
I found myself yearning for those weekends when I could hold him and feel complete again. I'm sure it all sounds cheesy, and while I do believe that we are still individuals, there is something to being married. It's becoming a whole person, when you didn't realize that only half was there beforehand. And to have to strip that away every Sunday night by saying goodbye for another week was nothing short of torture.
I have a great friend who I was telling some of my woes to, and she made a great point that's stuck with me. I was feeling guilty for saying how hard Gentry's and my separation was, because I know there's army wives and other families that have to live apart for much longer times and don't have the blessing of seeing each other every weekend. How could my experience even compare, when I had an ending in sight, and I knew I'd see my husband every Friday? She told me: "Yes, but you also didn't sign up for that. This wasn't something you foresaw and accepted. And it's okay."
Have you ever noticed how sometimes all you need is for someone to just say it's okay? That your justified in your feelings, no matter how irrational that may be? In that moment it was exactly what I needed to hear, and I was grateful for it.
And to be honest? I was terrified of what it would do to our marriage to be apart for that long. How many fights would occur because all we had was a phone conversation at the end of the day? How much communication would be lost because we couldn't see and read each other's body language? How much would our relationship lose as we changed? Because the growing was inevitable, would we grow together, or grow apart?
While the challenges that came from being apart did come, and the struggle of being alone was indescribable, I can now look back and see how much our marriage grew from that time. I learned to appreciate the small things. So often on our weekends together, we would end up doing nothing but laying around the house, holding one another, simply because we could. There was no need to go do something; all we needed was each other. And it made me realize just how significant marriage and our eternal family is. Because even if it was just us two, we still are a family.
I say it often, and I will never stop saying it: Gentry is my everything. He increases my understanding tenfold, and while yes, I could go on and be a good person on my own, by having him at my side, loving and supporting me no matter the circumstance, I know that I can someday become a great person. Naturally I am not there yet, but with him? I'm closer than I've ever been.
