Late night unpacking and thinking......

The past few months have held a lot of things for my family......our soldier returned from a 4th combat tour in a row.....we once again moved (6th time in 8 years) my husband has started a new job, different yet just as challenging as the last, we bought a home, took a vacation (albeit a working one for my husband), set up house and in those late hours of the day I start to think, and think, I guess too much about all that has happened.....

Not just things that have happened in the few months since he returned from Iraq, but on things that have transpired over the years since we married.....how different we are, this man I love and the woman I grew to become.......then from the love sick 20 some year olds we were when we married......40 was old to us then, yet we both have passed that hurdle already in life......our children were much smaller in the early days, going from one to two to three.... just children and now we have a daughter approaching 18 and where has the time gone and what have I done in that time?.....the years get shorter for us as we gain one in age......each year.

I look at myself and try to find the woman who used to live here......she is now but a remembrance of mine......a face I see in pictures, memories of her's now live with me......but I think of all I did not do....all I said I wanted out of life and what I gave up when I traded that in to be a military spouse.....

I would not trade the life I have now......not that it's possible to anyway, but I'd do it all over again, every tear shed, every heartache suffered, ever fear not founded, worry not warranted.....I'd do it all over because to not do it over would be to change those I love more than life.......but the late nights when I am unpacking boxes holding memories of years spent doing what I do, it makes me wonder, was any of it of any help to any one? So many fights wrought on behalf of someone else, usually someone I did not know......was it truly worth what I put into all of it? I'd paid a price, usually you do when you go up against any form of authority to have something changed.......but was it worth it? All I lost for the little that other's gained.

I made enemies, I lost friends and the respect I thought I had earned, I found out quickly was just an orchestrated act of smoke and mirrors.....maybe I just don't understand other people's point of view on things......it's all about how it appears to others and that is just not me, it never was and I never want to find myself in a position where my opinion affected my husband's career so much that I was no longer allowed to have my own voice.......

A couple nights ago I found myself going through all our old pictures, the ones in the box, years and years of them.......chronographing my life down to the moment each was taken......and I wonder, who am I?

I am a mother, a wife, a military spouse, a professional in my own field by trade, but trained in other areas.....I never graduated from college, but many of us finding ourselves choosing to go along with our children......but do I want to? Do I want to go back and try to find where I fit in in life in the new world we have evolved into or is where I fit in, right here? As the spouse of a senior leader in the military, a position that requires me to be part of that life......

I have been asked to stand up again as an advisor, but I have so many reservations about that position.....I guess because of all I endured at our last duty station......but I know deep down that my position is unique, where I sit right now and this is no deployable Division and the spouse of the commander, certainly not like the last......my peers in this life are strong women, women of all nationalities, women, who like me are a face to a family that represents my husband, both personally and professionally.....

And so........what do I reconcile about my life when its all said and done? I guess in the end I am just who I am, trying, like many, to find where I fit in in my own world......do I even still fit, or have I just become a circle trying to fit in a square hole?

~sigh

ASW