Day 70

Dear deployed boyfriend,

Wow. Ten whole weeks ago we kissed goodbye at the airport and I came home alone, a sad sad day if there ever was one. While we had been told it was only for a few weeks, we both knew the likelihood was it would be longer, and we were right. Which is why you prepared me for the worst with a card to open ‘when I get delayed’ which made me both laugh and cry when I needed it. Cry, for obvious reasons. And laugh, because of how little faith we had that a few weeks would be a few weeks.

What have you missed in that time? Well, hundreds and hundreds of hugs and kisses, hand holds and I-love-you’s. So many cups of tea, and walks by the river. Nights where we sleep curled around each other, and mornings waking up in each others arms. Many meals together, and cooking in the kitchen as a team. Days with your family, and nights just us. Planning our wedding, trying for a baby, team showers and Sunday roasts. All of it, the mundane and the magical.

I’ve had enough of being alone, of missing you, of feeling incomplete.

Please please please come home.

Send me a text or an email or SOMETHING. This wait is arduous, and I just want it to end. I need you home, I need to hold you, I need to look into your beautiful eyes and tell you that I love you!

I need you.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Day 69

Dear deployed boyfriend,

God this is hard, so hard. Harder than I can really explain. The interminable WAITING, is just torture. It feels exactly like I’m about to sit an exam, or have to go speak to a large crowd, every muscle is tense and every thought is of you.

I can’t explain it any better than that – I am stuck in this paradoxical world where you are both simultaneously coming home this weekend and not coming home this weekend.

So a small part of me is SO relieved that I will soon be able to hold you again. But the bigger, some might say more pessimistic, part of me is so afraid – afraid of the possibility you won’t be coming home, and instead you’ll be away for another long period. I don’t know if I can do this again, 9+ more weeks on top of the 9 you’ve already done? Where am I meant to find the strength and resolve? I know you’re not choosing to be away, and I know if you could choose you would simply come home, but this hurts. It hurts in a way I wish I could articulate well – it makes my stomach twist and curl, it makes breathing difficult, it makes my heart race and my palms feel sweaty. It makes me feel like I need to focus on my breathing or else it’ll just get quicker and quicker. It steals my sleep, and my rest, and time at peace. It steals my dreams, and my happy imagination.

Once I hear from you, and I know you’re safe and home I will breathe deeply and freely again. Until then, all I can do is sit, and wait, and try to breathe. Slowly. An email, a text, a fucking pigeon at this point. Just put me out of my misery, please.

Please come home. Please. I beg you.

xxxxxxxxx

Day 68

Dear deployed boyfriend,

I can’t believe I haven’t written here for so long. I guess because we saw each other twice last month, albeit for a day each time? Or because you’ve been alongside twice as well, so we’ve text and spoken a little more than we were expecting? I’m not sure.

It definitely isn’t because I’ve been coping particularly well, I can’t claim that at all! I’ve found the last 9 (almost 10) weeks really really challenging, which I wasn’t expecting. I thought having made it through the almost-4 month deployment last year I had hoped the first would be the worst and I’d cope better. Sadly not – knowing how hard and shit something has previously been doesn’t make it any less shit when you then experience it again. Knowing what the ache of missing you feels like or knowing what sleeping alone and wishing you weren’t feels like or what a deathly silent flat on a Saturday morning sounds like doesn’t make those things any easier.

Even though I know its survivable and even though I know it won’t last forever doesn’t make missing you any less of a physical ache. I long to see you, to hold you, to kiss you, to see you laugh, to curl up in bed next to you, to drink a cup of tea with you, to hold your hand – I just want to be with you. And yet, I can’t.

I pray to whatever God is up there to bring you home to me. I miss you more than I have any words to articulate.

All my love and more,

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Day 20

Dear deployed boyfriend,

You’ve been gone almost 3 weeks, and will be home in 3 weeks. Seems such a short amount time doesn’t it, to most people. “Oh he’ll be home soon” they say, meaning well. And yes you will, but 3 weeks more without you is really challenging! As the previous 3 weeks have been. I think what people fail to understand is the cumulative aspect of you being away – each day is hard, and it isn’t getting easier.

It gets harder as we move away from the last time I saw you, kissed you, hugged you, slept next to you, laughed with you, held your hand, made you a cup of tea, shared a meal with you. All of the small, simple things that hold us together. Hold me together.

Without you here, I feel adrift. I feel untethered. I feel a bit lost. Noone makes me as happy as you do, no-one makes me feel as safe as you do, no-one loves me like you do. And days and days without that breaks my heart a little.

Because I see what we could be, and what we could have, and I feel incredibly frustrated. I want the everyday with you, I want the family life and the memories and the mornings with you, I want the goodnight kisses and the middle of the night cuddles. I want the cups of tea in bed with our kids driving us round the bend. I want it all, and I want it with you. Now. Forever.

Don’t you want that too?

All my love xxxxx

Day 15

Dear deployed boyfriend,

I really ought to stop writing that because you’re not my boyfriend but its a habit now!

We spoke this morning, although really I think 02:30am really is the middle of the night. And to be honest I was really happy to hear from you, to speak to you, even if you had had 3 beers and were quite sleepy. Because it’s you, and I’ll take any opportunity to talk to the person I love most in the world.

I am though, quite fucked off with you. Rational? I dunno. But I am.

You initially text me earlier in the evening, at a more reasonable hour, but I was asleep so I didn’t see it. In the message, you proposed calling me at 23:30, and I can only assume you didn’t as I hadn’t responded? Why the fuck you then decided to call at 0230 instead is beyond me, as either way you’d be waking me up but 23:30 is much more reasonable.

So firstly, you fucking woke me up in the middle of the night, and then half an hour in you abruptly were just like ‘I really just want to go to bed’ like it’s my fault you were sleepy and a bit tipsy at 0300am, which I thought was incredibly rude and totally thoughtless – I also wanted to go to sleep, I had been asleep in fact, but you decided to call me at a time you wanted. So that hurt me, because it was quite selfish and not thinking of me or what I wanted.

And then you’ve gone, I presume to sea, without so much as a goodbye text. It takes what, seconds to type ‘Off to the boat. Will email when I can. Love you xx’ but apparently that’s just too much trouble.

Honestly I’m just pissed off at how selfish you have been. No thought or consideration to me, just you you you.

I love you, but also, fuck you.

Day 14

Dear deployed boyfriend,

I really miss you.

I had forgotten how exhausting it is missing someone, feeling like I’m carrying around this weight everyday. I really want to just put it down, it hurts to carry and it hurts knowing I’ve got weeks yet till I can.

When you last emailed, 5 days ago, you mentioned how busy and overworked you were, and so I hope you’ve now entered a slightly calmer phase where you can get some rest and not be working 18 hours a day! I haven’t heard from you since that email, and much as before there is always that hope that today will be the day, or this email alert will be an email from you. But alas. It’s not.

And it’s just rubbish. I cannot put it plainer, it’s the worst feeling. Having someone you love go away for weeks and weeks where you can’t talk, see each other, or even be in regular contact is really hard. It hurts, in a way I can’t really verbalize. I just want to know you’re okay, and I just want you to come home. I feel so frustrated at the time we’re spending apart, life it short and its happening here and now, and you’re missing it. All of it.

I just want you home, with me. That’s all.

I love you xxxxxxx

Day 4

Hello you,

I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that we’re going through this again. You not being here, and me counting down the days yet again. Much like last time, we don’t have a fixed end date which is hard, especially under the circumstances you were deployed.

Since you left I’ve felt at times like I can’t breathe, like all of the air in the room suddenly vanishes. It’s brief, and I think is my anxiety and sadness peaking – I am incredibly sad, and I am incredibly frustrated, because I feel robbed. And I wish I could cope better, I really do. I wish I was better at containing it, but it feels like the sadness has a life of its own and its seeping into everything else.

I just miss you so much! And I would never wish that away. Even if it meant I missed you less.

I’ve been thinking about therapy a lot lately, not the intense sort I had last year, but some kind of emotional support that can help me now; not that I know of anywhere to go.

I just… miss you. So much. Getting an email from you on Sunday was nice, the wait since then has been hard. I’d kind of forgotten that bit, the desire to check constantly. I think, THINK, I’m managing it better than I was.

I can’t wait for the next email. All my love,

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Here we go again…

Dear fiance,

I like writing that down.

However I don’t like that I’ve come back to this space so soon. You weren’t meant to go away again until the summer, and yet here we are in February with a potential deployment this week.

This life is hard. It’s all out of my control and that is painful to accept. I want us to make decisions about the when and where of our future, but sadly that isn’t an option – and I think I will eventually be able to make peace with it, but today isn’t that day.

It isn’t fair – and I know I’m a woman in her 30’s and I should probably be less childish and more accepting of things. But fuck it – it isn’t fair, I chose to date you but I didn’t choose the military. But I did choose you, and you chose the military. So there is that.

I can’t even make sense of this.

I don’t want this to be our life. I am fed up already of missing you.

I feel it’s inevitable you’ll go though, and so I need to speedily get my head in the space where I can cope with this.

I didn’t think we’d be back here so soon,

I love you.

xxxxxxx

 

Homecoming

Dear you,

Well. You are no longer deployed! And you are no longer my boyfriend!

No big messy break up, the exact opposite in fact. You asked me to marry you, and I said yes. A thousand times yes! My heart could burst actually, just thinking about it.

You’re currently on leave which I love, leaving you at home while I go back to work has been rubbish, but the joy at seeing you each evening hasn’t lessened. I wonder if it ever will?

I do know that we don’t take the little moments for granted, being able to watch a film together, cooking dinner together, waking up in each others arms.

Thank you for coming home to me.

All my love, forever,

xxxxxxx