When I began this blog, I was planning to move half way across the world. From the second that I touched down in Seoul until the moment I left, I blogged weekly if not daily. There was so much to see and do that it was almost impossible not to share it with my family and friends back home.

Since arriving in El Paso, my posts have been intermittent at best. The truth is that this year has been a struggle and I have not always known how I felt, let alone be able to make it coherent enough to put on paper.

On Friday, my husband finishes his contract with the U.S. Army. On Friday, we get our lives back. So why is it only now that I am capable of looking back on this year? Why am I only now able to say that I was completely lost over these past 15 months?

It took me forever to learn the acronyms and army slang. To develop a grasp on the lingo enough to understand what everyone was talking about. I have yet to be able to watch or hear about a deployment and not cry. I have yet to understand why I have been so emotional this year when normally I can keep it so under control. But there is something decidedly unique about adjusting to marriage when someone is all the while planning to take him away.

In the end, we lucked out. He didn't deploy, but no one walks away untouched. For a year we prepared for it. For a year, we were told he was going. I will never be able to explain how much that affects every memory and milestone in our first year of marriage. How much it makes you question everything you once thought you knew about your life and your priorities.

One of my favourite people in the entire world is bravely dealing with her husband's deployment as you read this. She is shaking her head because I used the word 'brave'. She doesn't claim the title. But she is. She is also surviving. She is dealing the best that she can. Sometimes, she is so far away, I do not know how to reach her. Other times, it seems as though little has changed. And the truth is, of course, in between. Nothing can prepare you for it, not even any one else's experience during it. I hope that she knows that I am always here and that I am sorry that my own struggle here has kept me from being as good a friend as she has always been.

Quotes I love from 'The Artist's Way'

"You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours."
Anne-Wilson Schaef

"Make your own recovery the first priority in your life."
Robin Norwood

"To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive."
Robert Louis Stevenson

"Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why."
Eddie Cantor

"Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music- the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
Henry Miller

My experience here...

As we listened to the counselor speak, I looked across the table at the man sitting there. He was a soldier who had just returned from two tours in Iraq and he had been diagnosed with PTSD. His eyes darted all over the room and he looked anxious as he asked the counselor for clarification about the forms we had in hand. I couldn’t help but focus on the wedding ring on his hand as he explained that there was no one left to sign his forms. That literally, none of his seniors had survived their tour. I focused on the wedding ring that he kept twisting around his finger as he said this.

These are the things of which I am not supposed to speak.

"During a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

I have been silent for a long time about everything I know, have heard and personally experienced in relation to the U.S. Army. It is not in my nature to be silent, but I have been warned that as a military spouse, my words and actions have a direct effect over how my husband is treated while he is serving. Still... there is so much that angers me about these current wars. Particularly how completely uninterested and apathetic most Americans seem to be towards it.

The U.S. has just reached over 4,000 military deaths in Iraq since this began. What you do not see in that number are the thousands upon thousands that come back injured, both physically and mentally. This war has taken a huge toll on the soldiers that have been there, psychologically. They see things happen over there that they don't agree with or are steadfast against and many who are deployed are against the war before they go.

Is this really the same country whose people rose up and protested the war in Vietnam? Who supported their soldiers by getting them out of a war they had no part in? Where are these people now? Where are their children?

I have heard and seen played out so many things that go against everything I have heard on the news in the U.S. about how the military supports its soldiers. I have heard so many things from the men in and returning from Iraq that make you sick to your stomach.

Do we not know that history will judge us? Or will it? Will we be able to spin this war in such a way that the citizens of the U.S. will be more focused on who won American Idol then what is happening to the men and women who signed up to defend them?

Aren't we there already?

I am tired of being quiet. If you want to know why more soldiers and their wives don't speak out, it's because we learn very early on that we are bound legally to the military. We are not allowed to protest. Most of our men have been told that when they signed up to be a soldier, they gave up their rights as an individual U.S. citizen. Since I became a military spouse and started reading the fine print on all the paperwork my husband has to sign, I have learned that this is a legal obligation he has made, whether he realized it or not at the time.

But I didn't sign those papers. And although I cannot talk about the things that have personally happened to him, I can bring to the forefront some things that are very common in the military, and that no one talks about outside of those circles.

Recruitment is one of the things that shocked me most about the U.S. Military. Not so much that they do it, this is obvious... but how many of them go about doing it. There is actually a very large monetary bonus for the recruiter who signs up the most candidates in a given year. These are people who are signing up with the chance of going to war. Who are signing their lives over to the government for 8 years (even though many think they are signing contracts of 3 - 5 years). I think that it is important to realize that this type of recruiting needs to be VERY carefully regulated. Please read below.