Simple Reminder

Stopping in to be thankful tonight. I am thankful for so many things in life.

Tonight I am thankful for new friends...a new out look, and that stupid grin stuck on my face from time to time.

Life is a crazy adventure...hold on...and don't forget to enjoy the ride.

Somethings are a big mystery...and you just have to follow your heart...

When you're feeling defeated, or tired...or broken...don't forget to be thankful!

I am thankful for YOU!

This is a simple reminder, that sometimes the little things we overlook, are the ones we should be most thankful for!

What exactly were you thankful for tonight?

--AA

Pure Triumph

Well, what can I say? It's been a hell of a year....two years of hell? I don't quite know how to word it...
And I'm having a hard time making it sound right...so to be blunt... The last two years have been hella crazy. HELLA? (shout out to F.Robinson...that word reminds me of you love!)

I left Fort Campbell in tears...terrified my husband would not return from his deployment. Terrified we would loose good friends, terrified to be a brand new mother, whose husband was at war, and whose mind was in a million places all at once.  
*Why didn't anyone offer me a xanax back then?*

Anyways, I spent that entire year in fear. Fearful that I was not the best mother...that I had no idea what I was doing, that I would do something wrong...that I wouldn't do something I should be doing. Fearful my husband would loose his life to this war, that he wouldn't love me when he came home, that we wouldn't be connected...that this war would change who we had been for so long.

After ten lonely, dreadful months of deployment and single parenting, my husband came home for R &R and I was no longer fearful. I was devastated. I had spent these ten months worrying I wasn't sending enough boxes, worrying he wasn't feeling my love from so far away, worried I didn't know the right words to say when he was down... I never once worried he was having an affair. Not until the day I found out about the affair that I never imagined he was having. And from there...there was another year.

My husband never once admitted to this affair. The woman did, her husband did, a handful of other soldiers did....spouses did...(yes even other spouses knew..) But me? I was clueless...and he felt innocent. What did he owe me? Nothing. He was the soldier, fighting the war...and nothing he did would ever warrant punishment, or guilt. He is so much above me, that he is the innocent one. In fact, this was all my fault.

No, I am no longer the idiot who believes that...but for a long time...I did...because I allowed him to make me feel that way.
I spent the year following this heart shattering news, tearing myself apart...and now putting myself back together. I spent three fourths of that year tearing myself apart. Begging him to love me again, hating the world, hating myself, but mostly hating her. I spent much time alone...in the dark...crying. Tears no one knew about. I preferred it that way. Everyone around me said he's an *insert expletive here*  "Get over it..." "You deserve better" "He doesn't deserve you". I didn't care. No one in the world knew me like that man and all I wanted was his love. (Now I ask myself why? Why would I want the love of a man so willing to shatter me)
Needless to say, we spent the next six or so months fucking with each others heads....me trying to win him back...him trying to decide what he wanted.

In the last couple months of 2011 I found myself a new person almost. I had faced the worst of the worst that year- - A deployment, a divorce, a mental break down (or 10)... And I was still breathing. I was still whole...and I was still a damn good mother. I think one day I just woke up (Yes, I honestly mean one day I just woke up...literally) And said I don't care anymore. I realized I could have a beating heart without this man...I realized how much I had dealt with and how much I didn't deserve to hurt. I realized what kind of person I was and how much I had done for others... I realized I deserved someone who loved me enough to be faithful to me and to treat me right.

So hello 2012....Thank you for stopping by.
With this new year, I have found my dreams again...my goals...my heart...my spirit, and MYSELF.

And Damn, it feels good to be me!

This year, I am determined to walk with my head held high and know my own worth.
Maybe I will fall in love this year...maybe I won't. Either way this year will be better then last year, and I will no longer depend on someone else's love to make me happy. 
I made it through the last two years...I can make it through anything.
I have a heart that is full again...complete and whole...and I can only hope to love someone who loves me just as much back.

I think the best thing about getting your heart broken, is realizing your worth...and the feeling you get when you let go, and you take that first breath as a free person again.

I want to laugh again...and love...and laugh with the person I love...every single day.
If it's not fun anymore, I'm not doing it.
I'm not wasting my life away with someone who doesn't want to enjoy me.
And I want to be surprised.
I want to be swept off my feet.
I want to be astonished by someones passion for life...but more-so by someones passion for me.

I want to love someone who loves me for exactly who I am....

Someone who will forever allow me to be that person. 
Someone who believes in me and someone who wants to see me happy. 
Someone trustworthy and honest, and someone who only wants me.
Are you out there? Can you hear me...I'm looking for you!

 
 I'm feeling rather triumphent and whole...
I'm feeling proud of myself for the place I'm in today.


Until next time,
AA
 

Destination Unknown.

It has been a long rough journey, and I still don't know where I'm going to end up. I have found myself low...and on top...and low again.
But I think as 2011 was wrapping up and the holidays were passing... I hit rock bottom.
I realized that yet again this year, I was a single parent, playing Santa, saving money, doing the shopping, doing the wrapping, doing the celebrating. I realized that last year it was not by choice since baby bears father was deployed. However, this year... he chose to not have a family. He spent holidays with a woman he had an affair with.  

And then it dawned on me.

Why did I care? Why have I spent so much time... too much time worrying about what I did wrong. I was not perfect. I am human. I have made mistakes in the last seven years. However, I was not the downfall of this family. I did not betray my vows. I did not choose to run from my family. I was a faithful wife, who supported her husband, while raising our child alone, while he was deployed. I thought I was standing behind a man who was doing a dignified job. I was loyally waiting for a man who was having an affair.

I will never downplay that deployment. Many men were killed. Men saw things, they never should have had to seen. It was a long, hard deployment. But the death of your friends, does not permitted an affair. It is not a free pass. It is not a get out of jail free. It is not an excuse. It does not mean you are not guilty. And that is something this man has never realized. But I do not care anymore. I just don't.
I have spent close to a year wondering if he would ever genuinely be sorry. He will not. I spent the greater part of that year, wishing he was still the person he was I feel for when I was 13 years old. He will never be.

It took hitting rock bottom, faking the holidays, and hitting almost complete break down, to realize I am so much better then all of this. I gave my all. I tried to revive something someone else killed. I forgave. I had hope. I had faith. I did more then I ever should have. And now I can do whatever I want.

My life can go on from here, and I do not have to feel guilty. I don't have to feel like I gave up too soon. I don't have to feel like there was something else I could have done. 

My heart beats to a new tune. I feel a sense of freedom. I feel a sense of wholeness for the first time since before that deployment began. But most of all, I feel accomplished. I have given my all, and now I get all of myself back.

I want to love again. Without holding back. Without fear of pain and hurt and betrayal.

And my goals for this year are simple:
Be the best mom I can be.
Be the best ME I can be.
Go on a date with an open mind.
Remember my own worth
And just for fun, I'd like to go somewhere I've never been before!

I have to say that witnessing my best friend get married a couple weeks ago really made me wake up. Her husband treats her son as if he were his own. He loves her unconditionally and would do anything in his power to see her happy. Those are traits I cannot say I always had. They are things I know I am worthy of having, and I know I will not settle until I meet someone who loves me for exactly who I am, and loves my son to the moon and back.


The last two years have contained the biggest life lessons for me. I have sat by and hated myself, I have learned how to love myself, I have hurt for love, and learned it's okay to love after love. I have learned my worth, and I have learned it's okay to hurt....as long as you pick yourself up off the ground before you get walked over. I have learned so many things. The most important thing I have learned is that the journey can be hard as hell...and the destination may be unknown...however knowing what you're worth can save your life.

My life is good. 

And I'm excited to have a free heart, full of love,

searching for someone who will actually appreciate it.

Yours Truly,

AA

How do you measure a year?

Another year, come and gone.

I am not one to dwell on resolutions, mourning a year past, or celebrating a new year coming.Everyone always says they hope this year is better then last...or that things go better. Lets face it...

This year will have it's ups and downs just like every other year.

Bad things are bound to happen. Good times are sure to come. That is life.

However something feels different to me this time around...
I guess I feel like THIS new year is a clean slate.
Okay...ok..maybe not a "clean slate".... Maybe I just feel like it's time to stop sobbing, and pouting and hoping for things I should have given up on a long time ago.
Perhaps it is time for me to focus on myself, and not on saving people who do not wish to be saved.

It is simply too easy to look at my husband (yes, we're still "technically married"...as he calls it) and think about all the bad things that happened to him during that deployment...all the terrible things he witnessed, and saw....all the heartbreaking situations he had been in. It is easy to dwell on all those situations. Over the last year, I have failed to remind myself that during that heart wrenching deployment, he also had an affair, betrayed my trust, and lied to me constantly.He broke every vow we took, he broke my trust, but most importantly, he broke me.

I've made a self conscious choice to dwell on neither of those things...(the poor him, or the poor me.) At least, to try not too. I've decided that I don't need to save him. I don't need to hate him either. What I need to do is get my life on track and stop wondering where I went wrong and how I can save everyone and everything. I just need to save myself at this point...let people take the fall for their own actions. I must realize, I did not go wrong. I have been the best me I could be. I was faithful, I was loyal, and I was grateful. I may never have been the best wife in the world, but I gave him all of me, and I trusted him with that.

Anyways....back to this new year..

I already quit smoking, so I can check that off my list of things I would like to get done this year.After, four or so years, I officially gave it up on December 3rd, 2011. I had a couple on Christmas because I was drinking and stressed the hell out, but other then that I have been a trooper! I'm quite proud of myself. I don't think I ever really believed I would stick to it...but I have!

What else do I want to do this year? 
1. Go to school. I'm undecided, and the classes I'm registered for start on the 9th.
We will see in the next week which path I choose to take with that.

2. NOT have a mental break down when my baby bear turns two in three months! -- Lord, where did the time go?! ((-Speaking of the lord.... Jaxson and I have been saying our prayers every night before bed...and now when you tell Jaxson to send a kiss to Jesus he blows a kiss up twords the ceiling... it IS the cutest thing you could ever witness! ))

3. Love myself. --Inside and Out.

4. I have been saving pop tabs from cans for the last two months. When I reach ten pounds I'm donating the money from them to breast cancer research. --In the name of a very important fallen soldier. Breast Cancer, in honor of my Grandma. In this fallen soldiers name, because well..he's awesome.

5. Write more. I have sort of fallen out of my blog, and it used to be such a good source of release for me. I would really like to get back into the swing of things.

6. Be the best mom I can be, keep my son happy and healthy! :)

7. Live this entire year, without a single regret. Lessons learned-yes! But I would like all of my choices to have meaning and reason, and not be something I will later say "why the hell did I do that?!"

It's easy to measure a year in terms of success and failures...in terms of months...weeks...days...
But why measure a year at all.
The months, weeks days do not matter.

It's the moments we will never forget that mean the most..

For it is the moments we will never forget in which we have learned our most valuable lessons, witnessed our most treasured memories, or experienced something truly life changing....

And for that, this year, and always.. I am grateful.



As always....
AA