How do we cope with deployments and the long absences of our partners? There's as many ways through it as there are people. Some find that they need to keep busy with every waking moment, exhausting themselves so that they don't have to think about the loneliness. Others find the opposite is true. Some people pack up and move back home with their parents, in a sort of 'reverse' childhood. Others stay on in the marital home, piling the empty side of their bed with all sorts of stuff so that in the middle of the night when they wake up there's still a comforting weight on the covers...

It's okay to grieve the separation. It's okay to cry, and to sob and beat your hands against the pillows. That's part of what makes us human. The anniversaries that we spend alone. The birthdays we spend apart, and holidays, and all the other times when everybody else we know is celebrating with their family- those days we spend with a Partner-Shaped hole in our lives. We can't replace them, and we can't pretend that they don't exist. We've just got to do it without the luxury of having that person in the room.

I don't know that there's a universal solution to this. Every couple has to manage it on their own. I know that my Boy and I send emails back and forth, as often as we can manage, and we always take a moment to acknowledge these days. Even if he's so busy that all he can do is a two-sentence message. Even if all I can do is send a paragraph into cyberspace that has become one-way due to internet restrictions and Operational Security measures. I haven't heard from my Boy in several days now. It is a physical pain, a tightness in my chest to endure. I just have to suck it up and get through it.

Serenity Now. Breathe. That's all I can do.