Over the last six years, I have done so much and sacrificed so much to create my very own family. I was married in 2001, and we had our child in 2004. Marrying a Navy sailor, I knew I would have to leave behind all of my friends and family and go where my husband went. And so in 2003 at the beginning of this Iraq war, we pulled up stakes in Virginia and headed cross-country here to Washington state, where two weeks after moving into our first home, my husband was deployed to Iraq for seven straight months.
During those long seven months and even to this day, I do my damnedest to make his life easier. I am not a Navy wife who runs around on her husband while he's deployed, who neglects her kid by partying every night, who finds solace in a bottle of liquor.
In repayment of this, I am nobody to him.
Actually, I am many things to him.
I am:
1. His financial manager. His credit and his money were in shambles when I took over once we were married. He was living paycheck to paycheck with nothing in savings, though he was an E-5 with very few bills. Four years later, we have a comfortable existence and his credit has been repaired. I don't have to worry from day to day whether I have money, for which I am grateful. Another part of my job is to pay all of the bills that maintain this household. He has no clue what bills we have, let alone when they are due and for how much. All of that responsibility falls on my shoulders.
2. His daycare provider. Now granted, Gracie is mine just as much as she's his, but due to the nature of his being on sea duty, I do more than 90% of the child-rearing. All of the decisions for her care from the moment she was born (he was deployed ten days after her birth for six weeks) have fallen onto my shoulders, simply because I am the one home to make such decisions. That in itself is a huge responsibility.
3. His housekeeper. His clothing miraculously appears clean and folded in his drawers, the house is clean and orderly, and dinner is always hot and ready on the table when he arrives home from work. About the only thing I absolutely refuse to do (when he's home, at any rate) is mow the lawn.
4. His pet-care provider. I am the one who makes sure the dog gets his heartworm pill every month, and who makes sure the animals get to the vet on time. This is doubly difficult because the military vets absolutely do not allow children under the age of 12 in the office because they also treat military dogs, and the liability is far too high to allow excitable young children around military-trained German shepherds. This means I have to arrange childcare for when the animals do go to the vet.
5. His concubine. This one is pretty self-explanatory.
6. His one-and-only friend. He's decided he doesn't want any other friends, so any time he wants to chat or he has something to get off his chest, I'm the one he turns to. This means I end up sharing his burden of work-related issues, something I really haven't got the shoulders to carry in addition to all of my other burdens.
What's the one thing missing from that list, the one thing that makes all of the above worth it??
The word "wife."
I am not his wife. Sure, I am in name; the state of Virginia says so. But if being last on his list, if being ignored but then thought of only when he's bored, is being a wife, I seriously want no part of it.
He made me a promise not two days ago to make me a priority in his life. This is after he lied to me about something that would seriously have ruined all of our lives, had it come to pass. Instead of trying to live up to his word and trying to repair the damage he willingly did to me, he chooses to ignore all his promises.
In fact, in the last six years, he's yet to deliver on any of his promises. I suppose I should have realized that he would continue to do so, long ago. But I have fallen victim to that woman's fallacy -- "I thought he would change."
Men don't change. Not unless they want to.
And Kurt sure as hell doesn't want to.