The Forks

In honor of privacy, I'll refer to my husband as the Sailor…This post will be about the beginning and the key points up until now….

He was a regular customer at the summer job I had during college. He's quite a handsome man, that's definitely what drew me in initially… but he's also just a very kind and generous, really laid back and funny guy. But he's also very religious and a conservative republican… whereas I'm extremely liberal and tend to mostly support democratic candidates… but probably the  most accurate description for my political views would be libertarian.

My dad always told me that your values had to be the same for things to work out in the long run… so when I came home for thanksgiving after starting to date that July I tried to break up with him… I thought yea we think we love each other and things are fine, but I really don't think this would last and that I should just end it instead of enduring a long distance relationship. But when I tried to end it, he cried and I caved… I still loved him and I was still happy… I wanted to make it work…. Fork 1

That first real summer together was the happiest I've been in my life so far, but that was also when I started to see the ugly side of my Sailor's drinking. Junior year I received one of the worst phone calls I've ever gotten…it was 2:30 in the morning and my college roommate and I were going to be driving back home for thanksgiving break and I get a call from his best friend asking if I'd heard from him and if I knew where he was. That was the night he got mugged because he drunkenly left the bar without telling anyone to find some food. He ended up in the hospital and they didn't locate him until the next day. This I'd say was a big red flag that I chose to ignore because I'd never been so scared before… wondering what happened to him and if he was ok.

That summer instead of spending it at home with him, I had an internship in New Orleans. We spent many phone conversations talking about our future and how we wanted to spend it together. But then he informed me that he was signing up for the Navy and that he had just taken a placement test of sorts. He'd never mentioned it before and now this is what he was going to do for a career. I was furious and told him so, that I didn't want to be a military wife, that I was just starting off my career with this internship with a firm that I could hopefully work for full time after graduation. That moving around would not be good for me especially if I wanted to have a successful career. I told him that wherever he got stationed I would get a job out there, I would follow him and we could move in together and I could see how I liked the military life. But instead of being understanding he lashed out and said things like oh you want to take me for a trial run… and basically spent the summer making me feel guilty for not being as sure about our future together as he was.  At the end of that summer we went to CA together for ten days. It was a magical trip and I fell in love with SoCal.  We didn't get much time alone because it was a family trip for his cousin's wedding… I expected him to propose while we were out there, so when it didn't happen I was disappointed but figured it wasn't happening then… but then my last day in town before heading back up to school for Senior year he proposed. And I said yes…. I don't know if it was because I wanted to prove to him that I did love him even if I wasn't sure about our future together… or if it was because I was upset he hadn't asked in CA so when he did I was just excited… I know I didn't say yes because I thought I was ready to get married… other than the initial phone calls that night, I didn't really talk about being engaged… I don't remember being excited about it, or bragging about it. I remember feeling awkward and weird about it and having to remember to be polite when people asked about it…I wanted to break up with him that summer and instead I said yes…. Fork 2

January of 2011 he signed his life away to the Navy… it was done. But he'd been out of school since 2009 and hadn't worked at all… here I was working my butt off at school, two jobs, and trying to figure out my job for after graduation. We were fighting constantly about why he wasn't doing anything that he could be doing any type of job to put money away for the wedding. But I accepted his excuses that he would be starting his Navy career in a few months, what's the point of starting a job when he'll have to leave soon… and that he was taking care of his mother.

And then I met the Mountain Man… he was impressive, this man who had his shit together, doing what he loved and just as nerdy as me, smart and funny, and sexy as hell. I was smitten from the start. We met only three weeks before graduation at one of the local bars and we hung out as much possible in those first two weeks. I found myself ignoring my Sailor's phone calls when I was with the Mountain Man, and I couldn't stop gushing about him to my friends…the first time we hung out one on one we were over at his place and we stayed up until 5 in the morning just talking…I fell asleep on the floor of his room. I can't explain the way it felt to be around him, but I loved it and I wanted more of it. Then his last night in town before leaving for a conference I went over to watch a movie and then we went downtown for dinner where a few of his students and my classmates met us. The rest of the evening was to be a celebration of the end of classes and drinking with everyone. I thought that even though there was some serious sexual tension that we were with a crowd of my peers I was safe I could let my guard down. So I got drunk and I told him I wish we had more time that this was probably the last time we'd get to hang out before I went home. He asked why it was the last time and I told him that before he got back from the conference my Sailor would be arriving to help me pack and attend graduation. I told him I wished I'd met him three years prior. I don't know why but he started dancing with me at a bar that you just don't dance at and when I turned to face him to tell him he was being silly, it happened.. we kissed and then it was just a full blown make out sesh in a bar with a good portion of my classmates watching… It wasn't long before I pulled away put my face in my hands and said I'm sorry I can't do this I have to leave. He insisted he walked me home and I cried and I vented about my Sailor and my fears of getting married. I don't remember everything that was said but I do remember him saying he couldn't do long distance that it ended poorly for him in the past… we hugged and said goodbye…

The next day I spoke with friends and my mom sobbing and saying I think I need to call off the engagement I made out with someone I've been so unhappy and frustrated. But when I called my Sailor to tell him what I'd done, instead of being mad and deciding not to come up for my graduation like I thought would happen, he changed his train ticket and came up two days early just to be with me sooner. He never even told anyone about what I had done. Not any of his friends nor his parents, he said he didn't want any of them thinking any less of me. I didn't think that the Mountain Man was a real option and here was my Sailor forgiving me for what I'd done without even a second thought. Why would I give up someone who loves me so much for something that's so uncertain. I chose to make it work. Fork 3.

I dropped my Sailor off for his first day of boot camp on January 1st 2012, and then spent a week in good ole vermont visiting with friends from college. I even saw the Mountain Man, but we didn't talk about us…My Sailor was finally able to make phone calls home and informed me that he would have to pick his top three locations to be stationed at. I'd written him a detailed and well thought out letter of where I'd be ok with getting stationed, and my list was San Diego, Norfolk, and Everett. I got a phone call while out at a restaurant with one of my best friends and he told me he'd put down San Diego, Hawaii and Japan. I was beyond furious. He hadn't listened to me at all and it certainly didn't feel like he'd thought about me at all when put that list together. He knew I was already iffy about the whole military thing and now he'd made it a possibility where I be in  remote place, possibly not speaking the language, and totally cost prohibitive to easily visit home or have people come out. When I look back at it now it's just one of those clear times where he didn't compromise, I didn't want to be a military wife and instead of trying to make it easier for me or sooth my fears he just goes and disregards entirely what I said. I wanted to call off the engagement then. Fork 4.

In February he was finally allowed visitors. I went up to Vermont that Friday night because visiting hours were Sunday 8-12am, I figured the drive from Burly was a lot shorter then Philly and I could make a college friends visit out of it. I saw the Mountain Man again, this time is was just us and we got coffee, well I got hot chocolate but whatever. I don't remember what we talked about, mostly caught up about work and other activities. I didn't want to leave and I stayed much later than I should have for having to drive to Rhode Island. I arrived at my hotel at 3 in the morning and planned to wake up at 7 for visiting hours. I was so tired that I hadn't realized the alarm I'd set was for a weekday and it never went off. I was lucky I woke when I did, but I was an hour late for visiting hours. When I got there and I saw how tired and thin and sickly my Sailor looked looked and thought about him waiting for me I felt crushed and guilty. I knew if I had gotten to Rhode Island at a decent time that I wouldn't have been late. I decided then to recommit myself to my Sailor and I stopped talking to the Mountain Man. Fork 5.

The night before the wedding and the night of the wedding were both disasters due to my Sailor's drinking. I remember asking him after the rehearsal dinner if he even wanted to get married. I remember thinking on the night of the wedding when I needed my brother's help moving my passed out husband that if this is the rest of my life god help me. I left my job and my family and friends and drove across the country by myself to join my Sailor on the West Coast in sunny San Diego. After being long distance for all of our relationship, finally being together, and especially without the distractions of our families, it was blissful. I fell in love with our life out there and I thought I was happy.

Not two months out there the fights began…. the fights about why he expected me to take care of everything, why could he not just help out around the house without being told to. The fights about how there's no such thing as women jobs and man jobs in my book and I will not live this way nor teach children to think this way. I spent months of futile talks trying to make him understand, only to be dismissed and belittled. Only to be told that I was being unreasonable and making mountains out of mole hills. Nothing changed.

And now here we are, I'm back on the east coast and I'm contemplating these forks and wondering why I apparently kept choosing the wrong path. Wondering when I stopped listening to myself, when I started ignoring the red flags, why I began just accepting things as they were. I've woken up and I'm done with making excuses for him and I'm done allowing myself to be ok with this situation. It feels like the only answer is to give up and walk away, but I'm finding it hard to just say goodbye to 5.5 years of my life.