Please welcome our newest columnist, Andrea Scott. Andrea will be doing a weekly column on being in a military family.

What is all this crap about being a military spouse? You see all these books on military life and how to cope. Let me just say that none of these books really helps you cope with the sometimes insane lifestyle that you have just entered, no matter how tough you think you are. You are not tough, you’re just stupid, but you do it anyway because you love your spouse. And let’s face it: the benefits can be really awesome!

Being a military brat raised in Europe, I thought I’d be an old hand at the lifestyle. But now, being a military spouse has opened my eyes to the true meaning of how to deal with shit that I’d rather not. My husband and I have been married for two and half years, and while we consider ourselves a strong couple, oftentimes there are situations where we have to remind ourselves that we both dedicated our lives to the military. He dedicated his life by signing up and fulfilling his dream of being Goose from the movie Top Gun. And I dedicated my life, thinking, “Its not so bad, I’ve done this before”. What the hell was I thinking?

We are currently in the deployment phase of our marriage with him being in Iraq and with me having to hold down the fort at home. We moved into our new home, and two days later he flew off to Iraq. Being a self-proclaimed “tough cookie” I thought, piece of cake, right? I am the type of person who loves to be home alone. When my husband has twenty-four hour duty, I use that time for girly stuff. You know, ordering Chinese, lounging in pajamas, watching a movie, and then crawling into bed and being able to really stretch out and take over. My husband is hip to my game and knows that those twenty-four hour duties are sacred to our relationship and that if I didn’t have these duty-free nights, I might be one of those ladies you see on the new Oxygen show Snapped where the wife kills her husband. When he went to Iraq, I thought, “This is going to be tough, but think of how many girly nights I can have”! Needless to say, the
girly nights are getting old and so is taking out the trash by myself. Sleeping in that big bed only makes me wish that he were there for me to yell at him to move over or, if necessary, to have him just lay on top of me so that I could feel the warmth of a man.

This is my story. I’m not the average military spouse—or maybe I am-- and the stories I would tell you will have you rolling with laughter, crying like a pansy, and loving your spouse even more everyday. Except for those days when you want to kill him.

Andrea is a beautiful, yet slight neurotic officer's wife who eats rusty nails for breakfast.

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