She Persisted Project

Ship Out - Rosa Aimee

It wasn't for the money... there were other reasons, imperious reasons that forced me to leave.

My husband cheated on me. He left me with my three little kids, five, four and a year of age and that shattered my world to pieces. Still, I stayed strong for them.

There were bitter times after we got separated and then divorced... the whole process taking two years, and a little more. It was painful, devastating. A hurricane that stripped off my strengths and undermined my self-confidence, and my willingness to trust in others.

Then fate decided to change bets and placed an unexpected set of cards over my table. Our paths met once again and despite everything that had happened, when my ex-husband asked me to come back, I accepted.

Before the storm passed, everything between us was perfect, so relying on the good moments we had and the family we built together after ten years of relationship. Even though we were not married anymore, I truly believed things could work out for the good, and so decision was taken. In the end, to love is a decision, and I chose to love and forgive, but to love and forgive is hard when the burden you carry is placed on your shoulders by someone you care, a burden called treason.

It was not easy. Everyday I woke up determined to gear up nice and steady this slowly refurbished relationship. Nothing is more true than what they say: It takes years to build up confidence and a second to wreck it down. Despite of all the times, the many times I told myself it was going to work, that everything would be the same, that nothing would change at all between us, it did. I didn't trust the man I once called my husband and memories hurt with sourness clouding for moments my reason and blanketing my feelings to the point of confusion.

The time came when I felt no more comfortable with my determination, and even though I knew I loved him, I realized it wasn't sufficient. Love wasn't strong enough at that moment to be together, neither to keep past off seizing us up anymore. I had to go. 

It was Friday night, stormy as hell in October, I recall, when I read the newspaper in the dining room, a glass of wine in hand. Reading the announcement at the bottom of the page opened a escape hatch and there was light, bright neon lights to me. At my twenty-eight years old, I had never thought of the ARMY as a so appealing alternative for my life than in that evening. In a minute I conjured all the possibilities and pondered all the viable scenarios; I had three little kids, a full time job, a family... there was no logical reason for me to even considered it, still I did.

As soon as the next Monday morning, I called the National Guard office and talked to a recruiter. It took only five minutes on the phone to coordinate an appointment on Wednesday, same week. So, without notifying my husband or anyone else, I went after school to the Recruiting Center. A half an hour drive that seemed to me a five minute short cut, and a short cut it was.

Images still fresh in my head, it rained, as it rained a lot in the tropics during October. While I managed to open my umbrella to get down the car once I parked right in front of the office's door, a too young and handsome Sergeant ran out, holding another umbrella to help me out under the heavy shower. 

"Good afternoon," he said in a cooing deep voice.

"Good afternoon", I smiled. "Thank you." I closed the umbrella after he opened the door for me. 

I followed the well built, tall and gorgeous dressed in uniform man to the last desk in the office. After offering me a seat, he sat in front of me, his lips curving up a sincere smile. His hazel eyes and squared jaw took my breath away and I had to hold a chuckle beneath my teeth to my childish and flirty thoughts.

After I was administered a sample test of the ASVAB, my heart thumped with pride and joy to the perfect score blinking on the computer screen. "Well, when's the sooner I can take the real one?" I turned around to face the man standing behind me. 

Cocking his head asides, he twitched his cute mouth dubiously. "Are you sure? Uhm... next Wednesday."

"Perfect. I'll take it!" I replied without hesitation and after filling all the paperwork I left the office and drove back home.

Eye-widened, my husband didn't say a word, well, in fact he couldn't when I told him I was going to take the ASVAB in less than a week. He didn't believe me, like no one else did. People criticized me and judged me. Others, only a few, praised my decision, as if a mother of three wasn't able to sacrifice herself to give her own a better life. To stand up for herself and take the reins of her future. I had to step out my comfort zone and to prove myself I could do it, to move on, to be strong... to detach my present and future from a tormenting past, a past that tied me to regrets, doubts and shame. 

It wasn't until he saw me in my uniform, ready for my first drill that he realized I was firm in my commitment, because I was. From October to April, once a month, I had my PT drills at Juana Díaz National Guard base. Proudly wearing my camouflaged uniform, E4 ranked, and holding a respectable eighty score on the ASVAB test, I did my job outstandingly and performed with efficacy all the clerical work I was assigned by the officers.

For the first time I felt I was doing something different with my life and I liked it. I was alter-version of myself, a one that despite off the rigid and standardized structure of the ARMY, had some freedom and broke off with the monotony in which my life was drowning. I had decided to test myself to my own limits, and it felt so damned good. I had always been a rebel, but for some reason, I conformed with the life society dictates for a woman: marriage, children, work, house chores. I've secluded myself, confined to an asymptomatic delusion of not doing anything with my life.

Deafened and blindfolded by an assumption of living a perfect life, of having a husband incapable of hurting me, I irrationally thought him sometimes near to perfection! I stumbled upon the pedestal I've placed him, and when the idol fell and crumbled, I only found it was made of clay and not of gold. 

As for the drills, yes, the body workout was hard. Running three miles three times a week was extenuating, but also made me stronger, physically and spiritually. Finally, I had found my way, a path to follow and it was everything I needed. It was the change I urged for and as the months passed by and the ship-out date neared my heart grew with excitement... but not my hubby's and sincerely that was the part I enjoyed the most, this little act of revenge I played.

And the date of the ship-out came, April 14. I kissed my husband goodbye and didn't look back. I didn't want to and I was impressed by my own strengths. On my way to San Juan I felt nothing or regretted nothing. I only wanted to leave right away to whatever the future awaited for me.

My last night in the island, in a hotel at El Condado, I watched TV and read a book. I talked to my husband and kids on the phone, perhaps searching for a reason to feel a terrible wife or mother, but it never happened. Guilt never showed up and while I knew I wasn't leaving on vacations and still I loved the idea. 

Very early in the morning, at 5:00 am, I left on a flight to Missouri. First stop on Atlanta, then to Fort Leonard Wood.

Since we arrived to the base it was mayhem. Contrary to what is shown on the movies, I wasn't dropped to the floor to do push-ups by a bunch of drill sergeants (well, not there, not that day). The group arrived to a receiving or reception center. It was a long day filling up paperwork. It was late afternoon when we were guided to our barracks where finally I had sometime to rest and think, on the floor, because mats were only to sleep when the time came. At eight o'clock, after taking a shower and brushing my teeth, I climbed up my bunk bed and laid my back to stare at the white plain ceiling. And for the first time, I cried.

I was warned. I was given an explanation... nevertheless, I persisted.