Hello Hurricane...

One a sidenote: I love Switchfoot.

Okay, back on topic now. Today was our pre-deployment brief. It's like this thing is being shoved in my face everyday. I know it's real, I never doubted that for a moment, but it isn't getting any easier. I passed the "just get it over with" stage and now we've entered the cling stage. We do everything we can together. He's being supportive. I think he gets that this is probably going to be the hardest thing in my life. He's encouraging me to make friends so that I will have some people to be around during it. I went to a party and made a few, as well as enjoy spending time with his friend, another medic's, wife.
We've also stopped the denial. We're being adults and discussing real possibilities and options now. He even asked me if I wanted to move home. We discussed it rationally and that it was a real possibility that I'd have to work out and come home a few months early but it was a possibility.  I can't do it though. This is our home.  I don't want to leave our home behind. This is our house and its full of Erik. Everything I look at reminds me of him, and so I don't want to go to an empty house with no memories because even though I know these memories at time will bring sadness, I know that at other times they will remind me of him and I'll feel closer to him. 
I have a lot of nightmares lately though. In fact, ever since the real date was announced I've been having them. Not every night, but enough that I know it must be stress. Two of them have been nightmares of him coming home from deployment and asking me for a divorce. In the first one I woke up after that, but in the most recent one I could feel the real pain in my heart and I felt myself crumbling away in the dream. Too many women have been posting these sorts of issues on Facebook groups I'm in. They keep briefing us on it at ACS and on how the men change and get depressed and it isn't so much that they don't want to be with you, but that they don't want to go through the heartache of loving someone and being away from them. Erik and I know better. I truly believe that. The pain is worth it to be their for each other at each reunion. He knows I'll always be hear waiting faithfully and loving him and trying my best to be the best wife I can be and the best warrior on his homefront.
This too shall pass.

<3s
Fae