Another Army Wife blog? Great.....

Where in the heck do I start? I've never had a blog before, and I don't really know what other people want to read about. But I've been going through so many things lately, I feel like this might help me. A lot of my experiences are ones that my friends haven't had yet, and it's hard to talk to them. I thought maybe I could use this as a way to get it out there and maybe get some advice from other people. So, I guess we'll just jump in, head first. Lets talk about journey to where I am now... being a brand new Army wife.

The Army Wife. It's a job. It's a step above just marrying someone. You're marrying their job, their friends, their lifestyle. It's hard, and I know I haven't even been through the hard parts yet. I've only been an Army wife for 6 months now. That's not long at all. It's only half a deployment. It's the length of an MOS school. It's nothing.  I haven't had to deal with any schools, or long training, or deployments yet. In fact, when we met last August, he had just gotten back from Iraq. Literally, about a week before we met.
He had deployed with a friend that I went to basic training with, and that friend set us up. We hit it off immediately, and we decided to date exclusively the first weekend we met. It was a 3 hour drive between us, so it was somewhat long distance, but we made it work. It's so cheesy, but I knew that he was different. I knew I didn't want to be with anyone but him. This was August of 2010, and he went on leave at the beginning of December, back home to Washington state, and I flew there right before Christmas. He proposed to me on Christmas day, it was cute and just the two of us, and I thought he was kidding. We drove back to Georgia over New Years, and I told my parents in January. He didn't want to tell them until he'd had a chance to ask my dad, which I thought was adorable, and my dad still loves. We decided we'd get married quickly so I could move to be with him. We just invited the immediate family and headed to the courthouse one Friday afternoon.

And just like that, I became an Army wife, how I earned my place among the silent ranks. And I would never change my mind about that. You could ask me to go back and do it all again, and I would. Being a wife is so different from just being a girlfriend, but when people ask me how married life is, all I can ever say is "pretty much the same as regular life." It isn't, but I just can't describe it. Mostly because, I'm so new at this, I'm still learning what it's like. I'm still learning how to tell him things, I'm still learning how to be an us without losing who we are. It's hard to compromise sometimes. And we're both still learning about each other. We have had our share of ups and downs, even in the short year that we've been together. But we've kept our heads above water this long, and I feel like we'll be able to keep swimming.