After 10 months of lazy days at the beach, after-dinner strolls
and ridiculous nicknames only a girlfriend could love, my boyfriend
has someone else in his life.
After 10 months of lazy days at the beach, after-dinner strolls and ridiculous nicknames only a girlfriend could love, my boyfriend has someone else in his life.
This certain someone puts a roof over his head, gives him medicine when he’s sick and brought him to Monterey and into my life. In the next two months, this someone, known to many as the military, will send my boyfriend thousands of miles away from California, and me.
I was truly blessed the day Air Force Lieutenant Mark Cuthbert marched into my life. Proud of my gutsy career choices, crazy antics and tolerant of the political banter I can dish out, he has kept a smile on my face since day one.
Mark is scheduled to be placed with the 101st Airborne Division of the Army. A weather officer for the Air Force, he’ll join the Screaming Eagles of Fort Campbell, Ky., and forecast weather for their combat missions. The 101st just returned from a tour in Afghanistan and Iraq. They’ll be redeployed after a few months of rest. As they relax and enjoy being reunited with family and friends, Mark will be trained and getting ready to join them for round two.
As a journalist, I’ve had the bad luck of arriving early to the scene of a car accident and watching two young people die. I’ve interviewed a poor family whose house just burned down. Through it all, I kept a straight face and my cool. I’ve stoically reported on many topics that tease with emotion and demand compassion, but when it comes to matters of the heart, I am weak and defenseless.
During the first weeks of reporting for the Free Lance, I had the extreme pleasure of helping the Arevalo family welcome their husband and father, Dionicio, home to Hollister from Iraq. As I spoke to his wife, Rosse, I found myself clinging to her words as if they were going to offer me any consolation. I read the book “Military Survival” in an attempt to find advice, and I searched for support on Web sites like CinCHouse.com hoping to find solutions. I realize when your heart aches, it aches. Period.
The hardest part about my boyfriend leaving is that he goes for a good reason. My eyes welling up with tears at the sight of an American Flag and my uncertainty about the future of a relationship that means the world to me, I am torn.
There is no scantily-clad “other woman” involved, and he isn’t leaving me for an extended vacation to Las Vegas to finish off a college buddy’s bachelor party of debauchery. He is leaving to protect me, protect you, all of Hollister, all of California, and this country. He leaves to help others who don’t have the rights and freedoms we take for granted in the United States. So now that I have acknowledged and accepted the fact that the man I love is leaving – what’s next?
Telling myself to exhale. Telling myself to get out of bed in the morning, realizing there are good people doing good things in a world filled with so much ugliness. Understanding that while I run around Hollister reporting on the news and developments of this town, Mark will be laying the foundations of such liberty for others in the world.
As he and many other men and women are deployed, so are we, the loved ones they leave behind – deployed from life as we knew it.
