Deployment Positive Thursday- Week 10

YEUPPPP! Week 10! I can't believe we are to double digits! And if everything goes according to plan (which it won't, because we're dealing with the Army here) that also means that as of last Tuesday (day 65) we have less than 300 days left of this beast. Still a long road a head of us, but we're slowly but surely making our way through this.

I've been pretty under the weather this week, so last night instead of going to the gym I stayed home to unpack from my weekend in Boston (those who know me know that this, along with packing, is hands-down my least favorite thing to do; in fact, when I was traveling to Louisville every weekend this past fall and winter I never actually unpacked completely, I just took my dirty clothes out and replaced them with new outfits). While I was putting everything away, I came across our Ranger School books (read about them here) that I made of all the letters we wrote back and forth this summer during Andrew's time at "the bad place", as he and his buddies call it.

I couldn't see it at the time, but Ranger School (and all the stress that came with it) was totally, one hundred and fifty million percent worth it. Part of me misses running to the mailbox every day to see if there was a letter waiting for me, and believe me, I would have never guessed that I would have said that seven months ago. I can't describe the feeling I had when I saw surprised Andrew after over three and a half months apart, and I won't even try to say how much it meant to me to pin his Ranger Tab on his left shoulder two days later at graduation. All the pain from the summer disappeared into thin air the moment I was in his arms again, and it's really nice to know that I have that feeling to look forward to again this fall... only we will have been apart three times as long, so it is going to be three times as sweet!

Reading through all of those letters (yes, I really read them all; it took several hours) made me so thankful that we have that period of our lives documented forever. All the emotions, the stories, and day-to-day happenings are all there for us to re-live whenever we want. We aren't the type of couple that writes ten page long mooshy-gooshy love letters pouring our hearts out, which makes the sweet little "I love you, girl" lines mean that much more. We planned out what we were going to do on leave, different trips we could take, what life was like. The summer of 2010 seemed to drag on forever, but knowing there was a letter coming soon, or a call (even if it was just for 5 minutes every three weeks) was due soon, was something to look forward to and helped to pass the time.

I still get emotional when I think about that summer. It's not easy waking up every day knowing that the one person you love most in the whole world is going through absolute hell, barely ingesting enough calories in a whole day to sustain an average adult for 4 days, not to mention the physical aspect. I read somewhere that it takes the body three full years to recover from the damage that is done during Ranger School. But it didn't matter, this was Andrew's dream, so it was my dream too. Forget about the physical and mental torture and shear exhaustion, Andrew's letters were usually upbeat and positive. I loved when he wrote about blueberry pancakes or sneaking off into the woods to find patches of blackberries, or silly stories of "Sleepy Rangers", like the one who he found giving a safety brief to a group of bushes and trees. It was the little things that made him happy, and they always made me smile. My favorite was always when he fell asleep in the middle of a sentence, which often happened a few times in a row before he would finally start over on a new page.  I love that we have stories and feelings written down that we probably would have never remembered otherwise.

So basically what I'm trying to say in this rather long-winded post is that even though Ranger School wasn't exactly ideal while it was happening, I'm thankful for it. It was so worth it in the end, and so many amazing things came from it that we could have never foreseen. Not only do we have these amazing letters to look back on, but we also were engaged almost exactly two months after Andrew graduated. Even though we were apart, Ranger School really brought us together in ways I could have never imagined, and I really enjoyed looking back on that last night. I can't even imagine reading through all of our emails, letters and cards in the years to come that I'm putting together in our Deployment Communication Binder. A whole year apart is a long time, but I can't wait until the days ahead that we get to look back on this time.

Graduation Day
27 August 2010