A Prologue

Well, as this is my first entry, I feel it necessary to go into some sort of depth about myself and my family and personal life in general. But that information isn't what I want this blog to be about, so forgive me for omitting the tales of my alcoholic father and sickly mother. All you really need to know is that I am someone deeply in love with the odds against her. Someone who knows that the cards have never been dealt in her favor. Someone who is hell bent on beating the odds, proving everyone wrong, and maintaining her sanity all the while.

I am in love, and I have been since I first time I saw him; he is the single best thing to walk into my life; his name is Kelly.  However, I am only 17 and he is but six months older than I. We are graduating high school in twenty-seven days and fifty days after that, my high school sweetheart will be beginning his life-long dream of being in the military by attending basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia. He signed up in August of 2010 with the soul goal to be an Army Ranger. Before he can get there he needs to turn 21, be in the Infantry and in the Airborne. He'll be in, and I hope I'm saying this correctly, Bravo Company when his fourteen weeks of training is all said and done.

The military is something I needed to quickly adjust to. Kelly has known his purpose his whole life and was upfront about his career choice since we began dating. My initial reaction was to be proud of him and respect his decision, and that is something I still hold true to. However, when things began getting more serious, I began getting more emotional. I cried all through Dear John when he took me to see it in theaters and found myself in a fit of tears when Tom Hanks died in Saving Private Ryan; to this day a news segment about a marine recieving a purple heart after an IED makes me tear up. I began to repeatedly tell myself that no matter how much I loved him and tried to keep him safe, this is what he wants more than anything and I can't have a negative frame of mind about it. As much as he'd deny and hate that I'm saying this, I need to be strong for the both of us. If I crumble into an emotional mess, his mind won't be on the training/classrom/battlefield where it needs to be.

"If you love them, let them go; if they love you, they'll come back." I have a gargantuan fear that Kelly won't come back from basic training. It is silly, I know. He will physically return to me. I am afraid that he will no longer be the man I fell in love with: I've been told that the military uses basic training not just to teach men how to fight and survive, but breaks their mentality and forms a new one--the mentality of a soldier. I'm afraid that he will come back as someone who no longer loves me. I think that's my biggest fear about basic: that he will come back and have made the decision that I am not someone he wants and/or needs in his life.

The odds seem stacked against a lasting relationship with him. We're in high school; he'll be in the military. Nothing in life is certain, aside from death and taxes, and this is definitly a uncertainty.

My future is also to be considered in all of this. I want to make a difference in this world, and recieve my English degree, and have a family someday. I plan on attending a community college for my first two years and then take those credits and transfer to a major university. Well I have the grant to pay for my schooling, but my family doesn't have a car. I literally have no way of getting to college. I'm the first in my family and I feel it's very apparent why. I don't have a large support system, nor does anyone in my support system have the health or financial means to literally support me.

The latest from my putz-y father is that I "need to respect Beth" (a.k.a. his mistress) and not call he whatsherface. I believe that he is right. HomeWreckingMistressWhore is a much better title for the woman you began dating after we left you before you divorced my mom. For the record, I choose to keep my father as far from my life as physically possible. I haven't lived with him in almost three years and my parents' divorce was official exactly one month ago. I will be 18 in almost two months and I feel no obligation to speak to him via phone, text, email, Facebook status...

I feel so overwhelmed at this point in my life, and I know this is normal for graduating high school seniors. I am aware, though, about how unique my situation is and I am driven to get where I want to be in life--happy and blissfully in love with my Army soldier despite the odds that are still stacked against me.