Push Comes to Shove

The last few days have been a whirlwind of emotions and difficult times for me here in the middle of the desert, away from my little rainy country town. With things with my husband not seeming to improve, and him just not quite getting the hint, I may be back on my way to the rain. Someone somewhere said once (ha) that sometimes things just don't work out for a reason. Amidst all the fighting, tears, anguish, and discouragement that I've gotten here on the military base (most of which is criticism from younger, naïve wives) I am trying my best to stay positive. I realize that most people in my situation would say, a commitment is a commitment, so you stay and work it out no matter what. For me, I am a realist. To say that I don't believe in fairytale love isn't exactly true, but I firmly believe that we are people and to human is to err. So we make mistakes, learn from them, and try our hardest not to make them another time around.

From this marriage, I take away the knowledge of what I truly want to spend the rest of my life working for. And from a story my grandmother once told me about advice my late great grandmother had given, taught me a lot. Back when my great grandmother, Olive, was in her thirties, her younger cousin was in a very abusive marriage and had come to her seeking advice. The cousin wanted to leave her husband, but in those days it wasn't something you did, even under abuse. Olive calmed her down and advised her cousin to return home to her husband and endure what she had vowed into her marriage. His anger they classified as sickness. And as they say, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. On the last few years of my great grandmother's life, as she lived to grow into her eighties, she admitted to her daughter her regrets. Telling her younger cousin to return home and endure a man beating her for the survival of a thankless marriage, was her biggest regret. Olive said if she could go back, it was the one thing that she would change.

Ultimately, what I took away from the story was that I do not want to live my marriage with such regret. A regret so heavy that I hold onto it until my dying day. A "what if" that could've changed the course of my future for the better. I will not be scared to do what feels necessary. Though I may be weak, for I have already endured, I am not ignorant to the fact that if there is no communication or compromise, there can be no improvement.

Lastly, I will not let the weight of fear bog me down from reaching happiness. You have to reach high and grab the first limb to truly begin climbing.

-W