almost a month in....

gene has been gone for nearly a month now - in that time we've gotten to have just two 15 minute phone conversations, but we talk nearly every day through email and this weird military secure messenger thing. these six months are the reason i made the promise to myself years ago that i'd never date a man in the military, and if i did, i'd most certainly never fall in love with him, want to marry him, etc.... in my head, i guess it wasn't worth it or ideal to have someone you love so far away and almost completely inaccessible to you.  oops! guess i screwed THAT up!  in my defense, i didn't really know what he did until it was too late.....

i keep waiting on it to get easier, and i guess in some aspects it is - i've stopped coming home everyday and just waiting on him to show up.  i've now focused on keeping myself awake long enough every night to get to talk to him for a while on the messenger thing, so i'm constantly trying to figure out what time it is where he is, and how long i can talk to him while still getting enough sleep to make it through the next day.  it's this weird, uncomfortable kind of paranoia to know that there's no way i can get to him if i need to, and its a daily crappy realization to know that when those moments happen that i think of something funny to tell him about, or something i just want to say to him, i can't just pick up the phone and do it.  i realize now how i sometimes took his being right here all the time for granted, and every single time i take the trash out to the dumpster, i want to burst into tears (cause that was his job, obviously).  The couple of times he HAS gotten to call, i feel like an idiot because i don't really have anything to say thats exciting - i just make small talk, really, and then when we hang up the phone i think "wow. i bet he's glad he wasted that call on me" - i just tend to tell him everything in emails and messenger conversation, so by the time he does call, he already knows everything....

i'm also pretty frustrated that i've sent packages and mail to him and he still hasn't gotten any of them - i'm surprised by how long it takes mail to get to him, and also frustrated that the guy he shares a room/workspace with gets stuff like, all the time - i have to guess that his fiance/mom/friends started sending this stuff BEFORE he left....i would have done that, too if i'd known it would take weeks for packages to arrive......i feel like he's that kid at camp who never gets so much as a letter from his parents, while everyone else sits around with giant boxes of cookies from their moms.

trying to plan a wedding when your fiance is in another country far, far away isn't very fun either. i'm thinking that most brides might think that this is a perfect arrangement, because honestly, until he comes back every decision that has to be made will be made solely by ME, but i'm not a fan of not having his input on stuff, and sometimes having to wait for an email reply to a question isn't going to work out....hopefully he will be cool with all the things i decide in his absence.