Guest Post

As many of you know I'm off on vacation (just landed yesterday) and I'm hosting Sam as my guest blogger today.  She was one of the first ones to respond to my call for guest bloggers, and she picked today! We are both Army girlfriends and doing the whole graduate school thing, so it's been nice to find another kindred spirit in the bloggy world.  Leave her some love/advice and I hope you all enjoy.

 Hey y'all! My name is Sam, from Steady as we Go. I am an army girlfriend, and an athletic trainer (see my blog for that one), and will soon be going back to school to get my masters in kinesiology/athletic training. My boyfriend N. is currently in the Special Forces Q course and we have been dating long distance since before he joined the army. When I saw Dani was looking for guest-posters, I figured I would take the plunge and write my very first one. I hope you guys enjoy it.

     Now on my blog, I do not talk about the Army too much; maybe little fragments here and there but I have never written a full post on anything related to it. I think this is the perfect opportunity to do so.

     Come Monday, N. will be off to train on lockdown for three months. He will miss so many things from the end of my time here in NC to holidays to birthdays and anniversaries and so on.  Yes, yes, I am used to this, and no, it's not a deployment, but this does bring up several reminders of past and future absences. He has and will miss many more holidays, birthdays, and life events. Even when he is not in training, or even before he was in the army, he missed these things due to the nature of our relationship. Before I moved to just three hours away, we only saw each other about once a month.

     I remember clearly last year, while he was just beginning the pipeline, he missed several things. Thanksgiving, Easter (we're both catholic, so it's an important holiday), My senior formal, my college graduation, my birthday, and HIS birthday, among many others. Let me tell you, I was not happy when my sister's boyfriend was at my graduation and mine wasn't. And being just a girlfriend makes things all the more complicated. Especially when you throw two VERY busy schedules and years and years of long distance into the mix. It has definitely brought disappointment and strain upon our relationship on many occasions.

     So what I want to pose to all of you is, how do you deal with all of these missed occasions? What do you do to make them special even when your man (or you!) can't be there?