Fear

I've never really been the kind of person who is afraid of too much. I have some fears that I believe stem from the lack of a relationship with my father. Like I'm afraid of rejection. It's why I have such a hard time making friends, & I have a pretty serious fear of abandonment. But those fears have been a part of me for as long as I can remember. I've learned to live with them. So while they're there, they're not overwhelming or terrifying.

However, the one thing that absolutely terrifies me is change. I hate change. I don't do well with it. The unknown is so frightening.

When Graham found out we were moving to Virginia, I was excited. All I could think about was how exciting it would be to be back on the East Coast, how close we would be to Charlotte, having a Trader Joe's & a Harris Teeter again, etc. But now the date of the move is getting close. We're supposed to be in Virginia by the middle of June, and now I am stressed out, anxious, and most of all, afraid.


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There are a lot of things that are bringing up these negative emotions:

I don't want to leave my job here. I'm underpaid (especially since I have a college degree & a lot of loans to pay off...) and I'm not utilizing that degree I worked my butt off for, but I really enjoy my job. There's always something going on, the people I work with are great, and I could not ask for a better boss. She has been SO flexible with my insane schedule demands. When Graham & went home last April to get married, I gave her literally one days notice that I needed a week and a half off, and she was okay with that. There are no words how much it has meant to me to be able to go home to Charlotte as much as I have, and I don't think I would have had that at any other job. My last two jobs were so demanding and so rigid, this place is a breath of fresh air and I will miss it & the people so much.

I'm worried about the security of the area. Langley Air Force Base is in Hampton, VA and I've heard/read a LOT of negatives about the area. I assumed base would be a safe place to live, since the base here does 100% ID checks. My mom couldn't even go on base with me when she came for a visit without going into the visitors center & getting a pass. Apparently Langley doesn't do ID checks all the time. I was reading on their Facebook page that there have been a lot of break in's, mail theft, etc. Since my husband is deployable, feeling safe is MY number one priority. This past summer I walked Hermione on base, every night until about 9:00. It didn't get dark until 8:45, but I never once felt unsafe since I knew the base was secure.

I'm terrified about where we're going to live. We have a nice house here. And it was about $95,000. You know what you can get for $95,000 in Virginia? A shack in the ghetto. I'm not going to have a job when we move (pray that I find one fast!) and my income won't be able to be counted until I've been at that job at least a year, some mortgage companies even say two... Even the small amount of money I've made this year pushes what the mortgage calculators say we can afford up significantly. It pushes what we can get up from a decent house in the ghetto, to a nice house in one of the more desirable areas. So, where does that leave us? Renting? Throwing away $1200 a month on rent for at least six months, maybe even a year? Not to mention our pets. Base housing has a two pet limit. Most apartments have a weight limit for dogs. I will live in a tent before I part with any of my pets. Period. End of discussion.

I'm just anxious. And scared of the uncertainty that comes with moving 15 hours across the country. I know I'm going to have to suck it up and deal with it. That is as certain as my pets staying with me. I just have to learn how to not let the fear and anxiety overwhelm me the way it currently is. I know that Virginia has the potential to be absolutely wonderful. It's a beautiful place, one of the most historic places in the country, it's at the beach, close to home, close to places we actually want to visit. The job Graham is taking should be more stable & less stressful, and I'm sure I can find something history related to do (even if it means wearing a bonnet & churning butter at Colonial Williamsburg). I just have to breathe through the fear and make it through these next six months. 


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So excited about moving to Virginia!

I've spent the past 2 hours playing with Google Maps. Graham finally received orders, and we're moving to Virginia in June! We'll be at Langley Air Force Base, which is in between Virginia Beach & Williamsburg.

To say we're excited is the understatement of the century. We're both so close to our families, and now we're a seven hour drive as opposed to a 12 hour drive. That's huge. Not to mention all of the other perks:


• DC, one of my favorite cities EVER: less than three hours.
• NYC: Seven hours.
• We can freaking go to Canada in less time than it currently takes to get to NC.
• And last but not least... Boston. Boston will be a shorter drive once we live in VA than Charlotte is currently. And considering how many times I've made the drive from Little Rock to Charlotte, you better believe I'm going to make the drive from Virginia to Boston just as many times =) 

There is so much to do in the area. And not even stuff that requires multiple tanks of gas. I started my little quest this morning just looking up how many Targets are in the area and got excited by our proximity to beaches in four states (NC, VA, Maryland & Delaware) as well as all of the exciting cities within a few hours away. Do you have any idea how complicated it is to plan a weekend trip from Little Rock? Chicago was the only interesting place we could think of to go, and it was 10 hours away!

Look at all the blue!

The stars are all places of interest that I've missed since moving to Little Rock. The stars consist of Harris Teeter, Trader Joe's, Nordstom, J Crew, Target, etc. We do have Target & J Crew here, but there are 4 Targets in the area, no super Targets and one J Crew which is 30 minutes away. I know this map shows a pretty broad area, but nothing is more than 40 miles away.

We're wanting to buy a home in Yorktown, Poquoson, or near Williamsburg. Graham isn't willing to go any further than Williamsburg, and isn't crazy about going that far, but we're going to have to reach some kind of compromise. The base is in Hampton, VA and I've read some bad stuff about that area & Newport News. I know we don't have kids, but the schools are abysmal and when the schools are bad, it typically means the area is bad. Feeling safe is more important to me than it would be if Graham wasn't in the Air Force, but since I'm pretty much guaranteed to soend 4-6 months a year alone, I need to be in an area where I fee safe. Personally, negative publicity about the area aside,

I'd love to live as close to Williamsburg as possible, because it's a shorter drive to Richmond, and hello; it's Williamsburg. As a history nerd, I am beyond excited that I am going to be living in one of the most historic areas in the country. I have a BA in History from UNC-Charlotte (go Niners!) and my area is colonial & pre-revolutionary American history. Other than Boston, could there possibly be a more perfect place for me to live? The pink triangle on the map makes up the Historic Triangle: Williamsburg, Yorktown & Jamestown. I am pretty much hypervenilating just thinking about it.

Living in a landlocked state has not been a whole lot of fun....

And we have our general area in Arkansas. We live in Jacksonville (where the "A" is) and pretty much the only thing here is the Air Force base. I won't say anything bad about Arkansas, because other than the mind blowing heat, and the lack of decent thai restaurants and high end retail, I've enjoyed living here. I love the company I work for, I love our home, I love our proximity to base (most perfect place ever to walk Hermione), there are some really fantastic restaurants, I've met some great people and this has been our first home together, so it will always be significant to me. But through & through, I'm an east coast girl. I like having the ocean on one side, and the mountains on the other. We drove up to Eureka Springs for our anniversary weekend, and while it was pretty, Arkansas just can not offer anything like this:

Grandfather Mountain, May 2010

The only part that sucks is the price of real estate. This is our house... cute, right?

Decent size. It's 4 bedroom, 2 bath, 1500 square feet, "two" car garage (there is no way two cars could actually fit there unless they were smart cars or mini coopers), fenced in backyard, huge front yard, smallish backyard. The inside is being updated as we speak. This house is about $100,000. Our budget in Virginia will be twice that, in order to get a nice home in a nice area.

Other than the much higher cost of living, we are both so excited about this new chapter in our lives together!

Wordless Wednesday

Deployment: 0, Us: 2

I know I don't typically post much personal stuff on here. I'm a fairly private person. I am very active on Facebook & Twitter, but those accounts are protected. I've had a Live Journal since 2003, which has been the recorder for some of my very private thoughts, but it's protected. This blog is public, so I typically don't give too much of myself.

As you can tell from my header, I am an Air Force Wife. But only because my husband is in the military. I honestly have very little to do with the military, and other than my insane love for the commissary, I don't like very much about being an "Air Force Wife". I have a whole list of things that irritate me about the base here, and their policies, procedures and complete lack of awareness for spouses that actually have jobs, but this post is positive, and public, so I won't go there. I'm an Air Force Wife, but I don't adhere to the school of thought that my life is difficult, special, or that I deserve special treatment because of it. Graham CHOSE this job. He CHOSE this lifestyle. And I CHOSE him. Living this life, deployments and all, was my choice. It's not any harder that being a firefighters wife, or a police officers wife. We get acknowledged and referred to as a special breed because we deal with deployments. I had a friend in college who was engaged to a guy who lived in England. She once went a year and three months without seeing him. That's longer than both of the deployments that Graham and I have been through put together. When you love someone, you do what you have to do.

Anyways. Back to the point. Last night, after 6.33 months/27.57 weeks/193 days, my husband returned from a six month deployment in Kuwait.

We had been through a deployment before ( we actually got engaged after he returned home from the last one), but this one was different. Last year, we were already in a long distance relationship. We were used to going a month (or sometimes longer) at a time without seeing each other. But this time we were married. I moved to Arkansas to be with him in January. We got married on April 23. He deployed May 7. We had a little over four months of total togetherness, and we both got SO spoiled having that time together. We're not the most exciting couple. Most of our nights consisted of curling up on the couch together and eating really good food. And I missed that so much.

Making it even harder was the lack of a support system here. I haven't made any friends here. It's hard for me to make friends. I'm lucky enough to have a job I really like, and to work with people that are great, but it's not the same as the awesome friends I have back home. So I was lonely. A lot. I know everyone thinks I'm turning into the crazy cat lady, but this cat made my life so much easier while he was gone. I love animals, but this one is special. We adopted him from a shelter on January 14, and I don't know if I would have made it without him. People say cats are mean, anti-social... that's a load of crap. At least when it comes to Buddy. He was company for me. He needed me. He's so loving. And having another living being in this house just made me feel so much less lonely. He really has made our little family complete.

I have so much in my head right now, but above all else, I'm just so happy. I've been so full of anxiety all week. I've been anxious over BIG things (thinking his plane would crash) to silly things (worrying the cat wouldn't remember him) and when that plane touched down, all of that went away. It seemed to take forever for them to disembark, but when they did, and I saw him... It's a moment I'll never forget. I feel silly that if effected me so much, when I've been through a deployment & homecoming before, but it was just different this time. And when I flung myself at him, and felt his arms wrap around me, I just felt this overwhelming sense of pure and total joy. While I don't wish for anyone to have to be separated from someone they love for six months, I do wish more people could experience that feeling. I think less people would ever settle if they could feel that.

I'm not sure why I do this to myself.

When the M&M's are gone, he'll be home.

Earlier today I stumbled across this blog. I knew from the "about me" section that this was a blog of a woman whose husband was killed in Afghanistan.

Yet, I started reading. I read a few of the more recent posts and then I was morbidly curious about her life when he died, so I clicked over to the month that it happened and read those posts. My heart absolutely breaks for this woman. The day he died she was blogging about baby formula and making care packages to send to him. And the next day her whole world came crumbling down. Her husband was a Marine and he was in Afghanistan, so I had assumed that he died due to enemy fire or land mines or something like that, when in actuality the vehicle he was in flipped over. That doesn't make his death any less meaningful, but it made me sicker.

Graham is deployed right now and he's pretty safe. He's in the Air Force, so he's not on the front lines. He spends 12 hours a day in 120 degree temperatures fixing planes. He works, goes and gets dinner, and then goes back to his dorm and calls me. We talk for a little over an hours, then he tells me goodnight and goes to bed. And I am absolutely terrified that something is going to happen to him. Specifically I'm terrified that on one of his trips to another part of that God forsaken desert he's going to be in a plane crash. Logically I know that isn't going to happen. Logically I know that there is a greater chance of me dying in a car accident in this town of ridiculously bad drivers (and I always thought that South Carolina drivers were the worst) than him dying in a plane crash. I even looked up statistics on plane crashes one day. I thought the pretty low number would make me feel better, and it did for a while. Until I read her blog.

My husband is seriously the best. He calls me every night (unless he has to fly off somewhere or there is a communication outage on base) and sends me an email every morning. But every time I don't hear from him at one of those times, I start picturing a black car pulling into the driveway and uniforms getting out. I picture myself going numb as a complete stranger tells me the love of my life is gone. I picture having to tell his family and his best friend (I have a very active imagination). Although I also worry constantly that they won't know how to get in touch with me and they'll tell his parents first and I think hearing it from his family might be worse. I park in the garage, so no one would know if I was home or not. Unlike a lot of military wives, I work. I spend a lot of time at the gym & at Target. So... would they wait? Would they track me down? Would they give up doing it in person and just call me? It's all so confusing and upsetting to think about, but I can't help it.

I just... I can't even fathom what it would be life to go through that.

Anyways. I've asked this before and I'll probably ask it again, but please pray to whatever deity you pray to for my husband and every other service member to have a safe return home.