Senior Jefe was home this weekend. He arrived Friday morning and left Monday morning. When I think back to our first reunion, it was so awkward. We hadn't been married long before he deployed. We both had trust issues. It was like meeting a familiar stranger when he came home. It was strange. there had been so much that needed to be said during that deployment that just hadn't been articulated. I had tried so hard to be what I was told the textbook milspouse was like when her husband was overseas (all that advice is bullocks by the way).
I realized this weekend that so much has changed since then and so much remains the same. Senior Jefe and I fall into an easy rhythm when he is home. It's so easy to forget that months have passed since we last held hands or had dinner together. This weekend we planted shrubs along the side of our house, much like I imagine normal people do. It feels like this is the way things are meant to be. Unfortunately, this leads to the things that remain the same. The bed feels enormous and empty when he leaves and the subtlest whiff of his scent in the room can almost bring me to tears. The couch becomes a temporary respite from the emptiness, but it too is filled with memories of laughter, cuddling and sometimes doing nothing at all but being present in the moment. Insomnia returns as a result, leading me to be awake at 0400 for reasons other than graduate school overload. Staying "busy" doesn't quite satisfy my brain on this issue. Much of the lab work I do is very repetitive and lonely (I often don't see another soul all day), leaving plenty of time to think about how much I miss him. The rest of my work is thinking/writing, which requires a great deal of focus, something I don't have for those first few days after he is gone and I am adjusting to real life again.
Oh well, what can I do?
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