It's worth the price, when the battle is won

"Being a Marine wife isn't much fun, but it's worth the price when the battle is won"

Those words are quite true.  The battle our men fight is for our country, the battle we fight is keeping our sanity and somehow managing to stay strong and survive a deployment. When you first get into the military life, you know you love your man but you're a little skeptical and scared about all the time you're going to be spending apart. What if his feelings change? What if yours change? How much will we get to talk? Will we grow apart? The what ifs that go through your mind are endless. You can keep yourself up for days wondering about everything, wondering what your future holds, wondering if you even have the strength to stay together.

After you've been in this life for a few months, you start to think "Yeah I can do this, no problem!". Then you find out he's deploying...problem. Your mind creates more what ifs, the same as before, coupled with what if he doesn't come home? is he going to be safe? where is he going to be? You start stressing out, deployment was always a possibility but you didn't think they'd take him away so fast. He starts preparing for deployment, getting into his "get the job done" mindset, and now you're feeling neglected! Why is he ignoring me? Why doesn't he want to spend every second together before he leaves? Why does he feel so distant? Now you really begin to think about what's going to happen, can you even make it through a deployment and still stay together?

Now you're into deployment, the first months are torture. You can't talk to him much, and when you do talk to him all you can really say is how much you miss him and love him. You don't want to ask him the million and one questions on your mind because you don't want him to worry about you. You want him to know you can be strong for him, you don't want him to know you stay up most nights worrying about him and that you're barely getting any sleep. You wait by the phone and the computer for a call or a message, you hardly leave your house for fear you'll miss some precious communication from him. Your friends don't even see you anymore, you've become a hermit, and a stressed out one at that. You watch the news endlessly and wonder if he's in the middle of all the fighting, you worry about every new development. You even begin to fancy grey hairs are starting to pop up on your head...

You don't know how but somehow you survived your first deployment. You might not have had it together the whole time, but you made it. You were worried about how it would change him and your relationship, but when he got home you picked up right where you left off. You feel like you could take on the world because you were strong enough to survive a deployment, and it's a great feeling. Not having control over when the military takes him sucks, but in your mind it's nothing compared to surviving a deployment. You're proud of him, and even more you're proud of yourself. You had strength you didn't even know was there, you faced every one of your fears and you vanquished them. You fought your own battle here on the homefront, and you won!