With Kyle being a Marine I've always known we would have to move and now here it is coming up in a few days and I have such mixed emotions its hard to sort them out. I've known for years it would happen, I've had plenty of time to prepare myself for it, how can it be so hard? Oh, I know why. Throw in the fact we just had a baby and I have to move away from my family when shes just a month old, that could be a huge factor in it. The truth is yes, I did know what I was "signing up for" but that doesn't suddenly mean its easy to leave everything I know to follow him. It doesn't mean I'm emotionless and a robot and okay with it. It doesn't mean I'm not allowed to have feelings and an opinion about it or that I'm wrong for not being ecstatic and jumping with joy to pack up and move completely clear across the country. Literally. Do you realize how far away San Diego, California is from Virginia Beach?! Its far. Very far. From coast to coast far. Yet every single time I'm told I knew what I was signing up for, and it happens more often that I'd prefer, I feel like I'm basically being told to suck it up, I shouldn't have any emotions about it and I should just go quietly and willingly. That just ain't the case. I'm going alright but I'm going kicking and screaming. Okay, not really, but I'm not happy about it and I don't feel like I need to be just because I know its inevitable with his job. One part of me is really excited about it. I've always wanted to go somewhere new and try out a new place. I know this will be a whole new chapter for my husband and I to learn and grow together. It'll be healthy for us and we will have so much fun together with our little family creating memories and traditions and exploring a brand spankin new town. Our family can come visit and we can show them around a new place they've never been. I get to see seasons for once in my life and we get to teach our kids about new places and different ways of living. We will make friends that will feel like family and leave that place in three to four years having roots and so many memories we can look back on in the future. Although I'm dreading leaving now, I know in a few years that will have become home and I'll hate to have to leave there and head to his next duty station. On the flip side, as excited as I am for all of that, I just plain and simple don't really want to leave. Its so different now having Remington. It would be so much easier leaving just me and Kyle going on our way and setting out on a new adventure together but having her changes everything. I know I am incredibly close to my family and that has been frowned upon by many people. As if its a bad thing or something to love and be loved so much by my mom and sisters. We really are ridiculously close and so involved in each others every day life. I never ever wanted to or thought I would have a baby and have to leave them. I know how much I love my nephews and nieces and how much it hurts having two of them in Colorado and one of them in Portland. 5 of them are an hour away from me and even that is too far. All I want is to have Remi grow up surrounded by a family that is so full of love and loyalty. I want her to know how magical and fun her Grandma Dots house is for little kids and be excited to go there because she knows there will always be a new toy or a new book waiting for her. I want her to know the sweet sparkle in her Great Grandma Pats eyes and to be around her enough that she will remember her voice, her laugh, her smell, her cooking, all her sweet comments and the way she makes you feel like you are truly the light of her life and that even though she has a ton of other grand kids you are the most special and important one. Somehow she makes each of us feel as though we are her favorite and I want Remi to be sitting in her lap feeling so special like she is the only person in the whole world that holds all her Great Grandmas happiness in her hands and with a smile or a giggle she just made her day brighter. I want her to be a part of last minute bbq pool parties with her cousins and cooking in the kitchen with her aunts, Grandma and cousins. I want her to grow up sitting on the kitchen counter fighting over who gets to tell their story first and eating all of the food as its being chopped and hearing my mom yelling at her threatening to cut her fingers off if she sneaks one more piece. Staying up all night eating chips, salsa and cream cheese and drinking pepsi talking and laughing so hard she cries. or pees. or has pepsi coming out of her nose because those things happen often when all of us are together. I want big, loud family dinners with her cousins to be the norm for her. The pure chaos of having everyone in one house should be what shes used to. She should be able to grow up with her cousins being her best friends and her aunts being there for her for everything. I want her to go to them when shes older if shes ever too scared to talk to me or Kyle. I want her to look out at her school performances or her games and see her grandmas and cousins and aunts right beside her dad and mom watching her so proud of her. I see the way my sisters and mom and grandma Pat look at her now with such pure love in their eyes and I want her to see that, feel it and know it. They should be around when she gets her first teeth, takes her first steps, says her first words, celebrates her birthdays. I want her to grow up with such an overwhelming feeling of love and support and to know how important family is and what it feels like to be so so loved just for simply being her. I want her to grow up just like I did. Instead she will grow up only seeing my family a few times a year and only getting to know them through phone calls and skype. My sisters and mom will watch her grow up through facebook pictures and picture texts. I want so much more for her yet somehow I'm supposed to just forget all of that and be happy and giddy to move because its part of my husbands job. I don't know how to separate my feelings. I don't know how to look past all of the wants I have for her and forget about them and move to another state and give her a total different life than what I've always pictured for my kids. When I say I don't want to move its much deeper than just not wanting to step outside of my comfort zone. Much deeper. Its throwing away all the hopes and dreams I've had for my kids. Its not like she will have a miserable life, Kyle and I will still love her to pieces its just different than how I want her to grow up. I do love it here. I have, or had, a job I LOVED and was soooo happy at and truly looked forward to going to work every day and now I have to say goodbye to that as well. It sucks, its not easy. I get that its my husbands career and I get that I have to go but it sucks. I didn't sign up for it. I married a man who signed up for it. HE chose a career that moves him around every few years, I didn't. It obviously wasn't a big enough reason to not be with him but it was something he chose, not me. I just get to go along with it.
I don't like feeling sorry for myself because I have a great life. I love everything about it and despite everything I just typed, I'm still excited to join my husband out in Virginia and start our life together. I just feel small at the moment. You are told where to move and when to move, no ifs ands or buts about it. I don't get a choice in the matter. My husband will deploy two times over the next year and I don't get a say in that either. It just is what it is and you just gotta suck it up and deal. You truly have no control in moments like this with the Military lifestyle. And it sucks. The service members get to go and chase their dreams and pursue their careers and the spouses just have to tag along for the ride. I think thats the hardest part in all of this, just knowing I literally do not have a voice or a say at all. Not one bit. These decisions are made for us and handed to us and thats final. It is not fun having a decision like that made for you. For those of you that aren't very understanding and think I should just suck it up because I knew what I was getting into, just put yourself in the same shoes. Imagine being perfectly happy in your life and job and being told you have to move, where you have to move and when you have to move. I bet you wouldn't be as happy as you think I should be about it. Its pretty obvious I don't like change very much but I am going to do my best to make the best of what the future has in store for us all while trying to give Remington and our future kids the strong family basis and values that have been instilled in me. Maybe I should be stronger and more ready to move and maybe I shouldn't care as much and should be more spontaneous but its just so different with a baby, so different. I find myself crying just looking at her and apologizing for taking her from soooo many people who already love her so much. I know she will feel loved and special every day of her life from me and Kyle its just hard to throw away all the plans I've had for raising a family but now we get to start new and have new dreams for her. My hopes and prayer now is that the next few duty stations we will be surrounded by friends who become family who we can celebrate all the small things with. Who knows, Kyle could get out after these next few years and we could end up back in San Diego. Or he could stay in and we continue our travels. Or he could get out and we end up somewhere else. God has a plan for us and knows what is best for us and I'm fully leaning on Him and trusting Him through all of this. I'm excited to see what He has in store for us and I know He wouldn't give us anything we can't handle but this will be the hardest thing I've had to do. He sure is trusting me a lot!
Here are those crazy ladies that make it so hard to leave. I love these girls and am so thankful God gave me such amazing sisters and an incredible Angel of a mom. Below is my baby girl with her cousins I so badly want her to grow up with.
Next time I blog it'll be from my new house in Virginia. Crazy.
