that’s a wrap

On the military life.. not the blog. You’re not getting rid of me that easily 😉 

After 22 years, the Pilot is officially retired from the military! You can check out the full recap of the fini flight and celebration here.

It’s been almost three weeks, and I have a lot of emotions. I still kind of feel like he’s just on leave right now, and can’t really believe that it’s actually over. It was such a dynamic lifestyle, filled with the highest highs (there’s nothing like that honeymoon feeling when they come back!) and some low lows.

It’s wild (and I’m so thankful to all of you) that so many of you have been here almost our entire military life! When we first moved to Valdosta and I started the blog, we were newly married and I was brand new to this entire lifestyle.

Babies!!

Our military life was puntuacted with pure joy, like the deployment returns and fun squadron events, but also sadness, fear, and worry.

– The incredible feeling when he hugged me for the first time after each deployment.

– When he had been gone for a long time and then felt a bit like a stranger.

– The fun squadron events and late nights drinking wine and chatting with the ladies.

– Talking to him on the phone while he was deployed, but hearing the rocket attack alerts in the background. (It was the voice of a woman with a British accent saying, “Rocket attack. Rocket attack.”)

– Carefully packing and shipping deployment care packages, so excited to check the mail, and cherishing handwritten letters and cards.

– Learning that his plane had been showered with bullets during a particular flight overseas.

When I first met the Pilot, I asked him how often he had to be gone and if he’s ever have to deploy. He told me he probably wouldn’t be gone much at all, and likely wouldn’t have to deploy. (All of my military wife friends can chuckle here.) He was stationed in North Carolina six months later, and was deployed for the first time within a year. He ended up deploying four times.

Military life is constantly being flexible for the unknowns and inherently rigid lifestyle. One of the hardest lessons for me was that the military was always first, no matter what was going on.

There are a lot of things that I can’t help but hold onto, but something that will be seared into my mind was when I had hand surgery (so one hand was in a splint), a preschooler, and a newborn baby with severe reflux, and he was TDY for over a week.

So many times, I felt like the end would never be here, and I joked that he would drag me to the finish line, a weathered bag. The weathered bag made it!

Sometimes we hear, “You know what you were getting into” when a military wife talks about her struggles. For this reason, we often feel ashamed to talk about the difficult parts. You’re expected to keep a smile on your face, focus on all of the benefits of military life, and go along with it. While I’m a huge believer in being positive as much as possible, it’s also ok to look around and be like, “This is insanely hard.”

I put on a smile (for the most part lol), supported the love of my life, hosted and attended the parties, went to the important events, held down the fort during deployments, long hours, and TDYs, and put my heart and soul into making the most of it for the sake of the kids. I was honest when I had a rough day here and there, but I didn’t want them to know the magnitude of how drained I felt. He was a commander for three years and did an AMAZING job, but it was difficult on our marriage and family.

You can love your husband fierecly, you can be proud of him, you can love and support our military… and not *love* everything about being a military wife. You can make the absolute best of things, while not necessarily *enjoying* every aspect of it. If you feel like you’re just struggling to make it through and sometimes just playing the part, it’s ok to feel like that. I just wanted to send my love to fellow military wives holding it down. If you feel like you’ll never make it to the finish line, you will. You’re amazingly strong — hang in there.

Many things can be true at once: you can look back with sadness, fondness, weariness, joy, and gratitude, at all the same time.

A little note to the A-10 aka the Pilot’s girlfriend:

– Thank you for the ability to help support our country

– Thank you for the fun memories

– Thank you for the opportunity to make so many baby meals — one of my very favorite things about this whole experience

– Thank you for the amazing health insurance. Some people have mixed experiences but I have nothing but wonderful things to say about Tricare

– Thank you for the military friends who became like family

– Thank you thank you thank you for bringing him home safely to us

She did great job taking care of him and always brought him home to us. Over 3,400 hours in the cockpit of this beaut, and while I won’t necessarily miss the lifestyle, I’ll miss the joy that the Pilot got from flying the A-10, his camaraderie with the bros, and being there to cheer for his accomplishments. I’m so proud of everything he’s done over the past 19 years that I’ve known him (just under 22 total in the Air Force).

I’m definitely looking forward to the Pilot enjoying a long, much-needed vacation, and then heading back to the commercial airline world.

Thank you for being there for us during the twists and turns of this crazy military life. While we’re turning the page, I’m looking forward to chapter 2. 🙂

xoxo

Gina