Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Doesn’t love mean compromise? When will she stop blaming me for everything? Really, I don’t know much of anything anymore. Can I help her? Can this work? How can I be home with her and support us at the same time? The weight of the world is on my shoulders and it’s crushing me. How can I keep our family together?
I gave up the Marines. My income, my benefits, my retirement, and my pride, I gave it all up for her. Trying to support us, there hasn’t been money to go back home to Iowa. My last duty station was here in North Carolina. I feel stuck here. Since I’m not active duty, base housing is no longer an option. Everything feels stacked against me. I’m hanging on by a thread.
I got us a little trailer in this small town outside of Jacksonville, but making things work is hard. Bills keep coming. I promised Anna she could be a stay-at-home mom, and I’m doing everything I can for her and our son. As soon as I got to the end of my active service, she went off her birth control. Quickly, she had a positive pregnancy test and Hollis Dillon Jacoby is here! A son, my bundle of life, he is everything to me.
The moment Hollis came screaming into this world, nothing has been more important than him. His safety, his well-being, his needs, and his wants. There is no love like that of a parent to a child. This first two months of his life have been a whirlwind between sleepless nights and working, while wanting to be with him as much as I can I already feel stretched too thin.
Unfortunately, no one prepares any parents to be about the post-partum life. Everything about Anna changed after Hollis’s birth. The time I served taught me to adapt and overcome. I should have been able to help her navigate this new life. Her changing wasn’t the problem.
It’s me.
I have been an issue for her.
Nothing I do is right. Everything practically brings her to tears.
Which is why she asked me for a divorce. Talk about soul crushing reality, that is it. The woman I love more than anything in this life other than our son wants to divorce me. She can’t stand the thought of a future with me. I have slept in my car for a few nights until she finally let me back in the house. There isn’t enough money for me to get a hotel room or rent another spot for me. I don’t want have friends here. Sure, I know people, but not well enough to air my dirty laundry by asking for a place to stay. I will do anything for this to work. I’ve basically begged like a fool for another chance.
I don’t know that this return home is about me as much as she doesn’t want to handle the night feedings with Hollis. She needs her sleep, I understand. Honestly, I’m grateful that she doesn’t like waking up with him. I love the quiet of each night with my boy. The way he falls asleep on my chest in the chair until he wakes again for a diaper change, or another bottle is this special home for me. I’ll do anything to keep my son in my arms, in my life, and no matter what I’ll never walk away.
To me, this is my only hope to holding onto this family we have built. It comes at a price though, one I’m not sure I’m able to pay. Bend to her every demand or she’s out and taking my son with her.
“If you even want me to consider being a family again, you have to help me, Dillon. This is your son. I can’t do this alone.”
I slam my hand on the steering wheel of the beat-up Chevy Trailblazer. “Dammit, Anna. You know I’m all in. For fucks sake, I didn’t re-enlist. The bills have to be paid. I have to work. I can’t keep calling out or taking off early. Can’t you see I’m trying?”
“Try harder,” she mutters before the line goes dead.
What the absolute fuck am I going to do?
ONE
MARITZA
“You know you don’t have to work here, hija. I can talk to your dad.” She sighs, “I know he worries and wants you here, but you need to have a life for yourself.”
I smile softly at my mother, “no place I’d rather be.”
It’s hard this dynamic of growing up. Watching my parents who have always taken care of everything actually needing help. Of course my mother will never ask or admit she could use a hand. It’s not in her spirit. My father knows this and asked me to step in and show up. She will never turn me away, but she also won’t admit she could use me even to simply hang around. She is the strongest woman I’ve ever known. What she’s going through now and how to process it?