I remember the first time I noticed that my life was changing. My first day of therapy felt like I had started all over on page one. I knew that from that point on, nothing would ever be the same. I knew I had walked away from who I was and I started to grow up. The second time was the day my father and I got in the fight that changed my life. When I stepped into Judy's car, I knew things were going to change. The day I packed up the van with my step dad was really so emotional for me. Again, I was certain that I had stepped past the boundary of no return. All there was to do was go up from there. My third transition was the day my husband left for Germany. Oddly enough, I didn't feel it when he proposed or when we got married, or even on our honeymoon. The new stage didn't begin until the first time that we separated. This was really the first time I felt like a woman, and the first time I felt like a wife. As I waved goodbye to him, I knew that things would forever be changed. There was a period of time from when he deployed to the day we decided to start trying to have a baby. Maybe this would be the period where I knew things were changing. We grew on our own as well as grew as a couple during these months. I don't know when things changed that fourth time. Perhaps it was during our trip to Rammstein, when I was laying on the doctor's table after getting my spinal tap, when he told me that I should write a book. Maybe in that point when so much bad had happened and he brought light to me was the fourth time.
But sometime between him deploying and us moving back home, life changed. It changed into this sort of transitional phase though. It changed into this up-in-the-air lifestyle. We got jobs that were good enough, looked for a house that was good enough, and everything we did was simply good enough. We settled into our current jobs, rented a little house, and for once we didn't have to be on the move anymore. We're restless, though. We like our house, but we're already a little tired of the constant repairs. We love our jobs, but we know we won't want to stay forever. We are living pretty comfortably, but we are both itching to do more. We also, honestly, hate this city. So I can feel it. I can sense this unsettling and it irks me that this is going to be an entire stage of our lives. I sit around and daydream about when this stage will end.
Originally, when I had my miscarriage and first realized that we were not yet in that stage, I thought I would join the Navy. I love the military, I love the ocean, I love the idea of living on a cramped old ship, I love the idea of travelling the World, and I love the idea of spending some time out on my own chasing dreams. I've studied Navy things and I've been working pretty hard to train my body and eat right. This is something I want, but now that it has been a few months, I'm wondering if it is really what I need.
You see, like I said before, I kind of love my job. I am really good at what I do and I am head over heels at the idea that I have been non-stop learning since I got here! My boss has taken me under her wing and she really likes the spark and the passion she sees in me. I get to dress nice, I get to smile and greet people, I get to see how many things I can multitask, and I am in a heated/air conditioned building with TWO windows all day. I get paid Holidays, paid sick days, and all kinds of hoity toity networking events. Other than having to sit all day, I am really happy with what I do. The main issue I was running into was having a sense of purpose. I sort of fell into that purpose when I volunteered to be a rape counselor. The more I thought about it, the more it just made sense. Balance this amazing job with a really important and fulfilling volunteer life. I can have it all.
My husband recently got promoted too. He has started going on about trying to work his way up to assistant manager and maybe, one day, having his own piece of the franchise. He is so happy where he is, and he finally has the passion to work on getting higher up. It might sound silly, but it just makes me so happy to see this spark in him.
So all of this got me to thinking. I mean really, really thinking hard. If I were to join the Navy, it wouldn't be for another year. I would want at least one more set of Holidays and honestly, my body works really slowly. Losing 50 pounds may be doable for many people in one year's time but I don't think my body works that way. Plus, I really hate having a goal of a specific weight. I just want to keep doing it the way that it works for me. On top of that, I would be joining when I'm around 22 or 23. I would do at least a 3 year contract out on a ship. That's time away from my husband, my family, my friends, and my rape counseling. Those are 3 years spent outside my field of work. If I hated it then I would be out around 25 or 26. I would have some savings probably and would be ready to get back to work, hopefully at a bank. I would be rusty, though, as I wouldn't be kept up with regulations and whatnot during my Navy career. I would also want to be moving away from Mobile, but that would be difficult as I would probably come home in the middle of a lease. You can see where this is going. To choose the Navy might be choosing the opposite lifestyle from what I really want.
If I stay here, and both of us stay in our jobs, we will be in a totally different place in 3 years. It's safe to believe my husband would have moved up one or two more times, maybe into assistant manager. I will probably be fully trained on processing and can get a year or two of experience. Financially we should be able to pay off one credit card and comfortably pay down the other two. We can get a little bit into savings and then start looking at moving away. We can take one or two day trips up to look at homes. It would be safe to estimate that if we stay, we can be moving away by the time I am 25. We can get our home, get settled into new jobs, and finally be relaxing in a year or two after that. So if we stay put, and I use my volunteering to fill that need to help, to spread joy, and to really make a name for myself, we might be ready to have a baby by the time I am 27. When I stop and I think about it, that just sounds so nice.
When I think about all the growing and changing we'll be doing in that time, I can't help but smile. When I picture the two options, one of them just looks so much better to me. Being in this unsettled stage of life is really hard and frankly kind of scary. There are so many ways that we can alter our timeline right now. The smallest change could turn everything upside down. The biggest factor to me is that I don't want to lose my dream of being a mommy and I don't want to rush it either. I want to be financially better off and I want to be settled before we work on our little one. I want us to really know who we are and what we want out of life before we pour everything into a child. I want to make sure that we feel fulfilled and happy every day before we get those feelings from our child. I want a baby, probably more than anything else in the World, and I think right now we're in the stage where we can start planning for that reality.
I think from here on out I'm going to make that choice. When I think about work, I have to think about a 3 year or 5 year plan. When I think about moving rental homes, getting another dog, or chasing a passion, I need to think about a plan. Hell, I guess I should really make a 3 or 5 year plan. It's a little nerve wracking to realize I am at the point in my life that I finally need one of these plans. Some people make them when they are eighteen and others wait until they are thirty, but I think we're ready for a plan. I think this stage of life can last a few more years, bring us to a few more journeys, introduce us to a few more people. I am looking forward to the next stage of life when we can expand the Smith four into the Smith five.
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