Pepper #2
At any rate, like most men who believed that they could do anything, I’d also gotten married rather young.
Though I’d already had two deployments under my belt, I’d been only twenty-eight, and that’d been far too young to get married.
Yeah, lots of people did it, and a lot of those marriages survived the hard times, but marriage was also something else that changed a man; at least, it should.
When you became responsible for another person, there came a whole new set of rules that needed to be played by, and when you were young, it was easy to believe that you could skim past some of those rules, but you really couldn’t.
Marriage was a partnership unlike any other, and not enough people took it seriously enough, me included.
It also wasn’t like becoming a parent. Being responsible for a child was different from being responsible for a wife.
Raising a child gave you a hand in how they would view you, and the love there was almost always unconditional, which wasn’t the case with a spouse.
A spouse wasn’t a child that was dependent on you until they became of age.
A spouse was an adult that could change their mind the minute that things were no longer working for them, and that’s what had happened to me.
I’d met Bethany Cramer through an online pen-pal program for deployed soldiers, and after chatting for months, I’d been eager to meet her the second that I had stepped foot back on US soil, and our relationship had been the very definition of a whirlwind romance.
While the months of messages had been vital in getting to know each other, it had also felt like they’d been keeping us apart, so after six months of chatting, then six months of dating in the real world, I had asked Bethany to marry me, and she’d said yes with the biggest smile on her face.
For ten years, we’d been happy. For ten years, Bethany had worked as a billing clerk in a medical office, and she had held the fort down during two more deployments.
Everything had been fine until she’d gotten pregnant, the final blessing that we’d needed to complete our perfect life.
I’d been scared and exhilarated all at the same time, but I’d also been ready to embrace fatherhood with a desire for life that I’d never felt before.
However, our perfect life had imploded when Bethany had miscarried in her fourth month, and I’d been in a foreign country, finalizing the last stretch of my military career before retirement, so that I could be at home with my wife and all the children that she’d been willing to give me.
Still, having to experience the loss without me at her side, she’d been angry and hurt, and rightfully so.
It hadn’t mattered that I’d been granted immediate leave, reaching her within two days; the damage had already been done.
In a torrent of loneliness, tears, rage, and pain, Bethany’s resentment had spewed forth like a violent volcano that’d had enough, and she had blamed me for losing the baby, needing to blame someone for her anguish.
A month later, she had filed for divorce, not caring how close I’d been to retirement, and because guilt was a motherfucker, I had granted her the divorce, refusing to be the reason that she continued to be miserable.
The last that I’d heard, she still worked at the medical office, but she was remarried, had two kids, and both children looked like her with their dark brown hair and amber-colored eyes.
They were also girls, which I thought was perfect for the Bethany that I’d known.
As for me, instead of retiring, I had punished myself by dedicating five more years of my life to serving my country, and I couldn’t help but constantly wonder where my life would be right now if I hadn’t given those extra five years.
It was also hard to see myself now and not resent the sacrifices that I’d made in the name of my country.
While I was proud of the belief behind the message, I also felt discarded, and nothing was worse than feeling like trash that was so easily thrown away.
Despite it all, there was a small measure of comfort in knowing that I wasn’t the only one, though I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad.
For all of the help out there, none of it would ever be enough because you couldn’t help those that didn’t want to help themselves, and for the ones that really wanted help, the financial and emotional costs could be too much sometimes.
While a lot of people believed that counseling was about substantial advice to help someone overcome their demons, it wasn’t.
It was about connecting.
It was about connecting with that one person who had the ability to make you feel heard and seen.
It was about connecting with a therapist who didn’t make you feel like just another appointment.
It was about connecting with someone who saw past what you were saying to understand what you were really feeling, something that not everyone had the ability to do.
Shaking my head, I rolled up my stuff, ready to call it a night.
Luckily, the sun was still playing nice, so the evenings were still cool and comfortable, something that was going to change quickly with the month of June rolling in, and once July and August rolled around, the suffocating misery of heat was going to roll right on in alongside them.
Now, could things be worse? Always.
Could they be better? I hoped so.
Either way, I wasn’t quite ready to give up, though you’d think that I’d already had by just looking at me, but that wasn’t the case.
The fact that I was still alive was proof enough that I hadn’t given up just yet, and I knew myself well enough to know that I was nowhere near close to the point of no return, something that helped keep me warm at night.
Something that I was still very proud of.