My husband, Sean and I live a pretty exciting life. He is in the Marine Corps and we’ve been apart for most of our relationship. In our case, saying goodbye was more often than saying hello. Sean and I met in high school; he was a junior and I was a sophomore. Sean and I had a class together and we both hit it off pretty quickly. We spent a year together before he started his new life in the Marine Corps. Since Sean joined the Marine Corps, it’s been nothing but an emotional roller coaster. The first hardship we faced, which probably was the worst, was boot camp. Sean left for boot camp on July 22^nd, 2012, two days before our one year anniversary and a week before his birthday. Our motivation to make it through boot camp was writing letters. Sean and I wrote to each other every day for three months. On October 19^th, Sean graduated boot camp and that night was the first time I saw him in three months. I saw him walking towards me at the other end of the airport and butterflies filled my entire body. We ran to each other and hugged for what seemed like forever. That night at the airport was just like a scene of a movie. Sean got to come home for ten days, then it was back to training in North Carolina. He was gone for another month and a half, and he ended up missing thanksgiving, as well as my birthday. I got to talk to him for one minute exactly on the phone on my birthday. While Sean was away for training, I would always look forward to the little things, such as, a letter in the mail, a text, or a phone call. Sean was able to come home after each round of training, but only for a couple days at a time, which made me upset because at that point I had to see him leave more than spend time with him. He knew I was struggling with the distance and he hated leaving me so he devised a plan. In December, he told me he didn’t know when he would be home next, which made me think I would be alone for another holiday, and a big one at that. On December 7^th I was asked to babysit by Sean’s mother for Sean’s little brother. While I was there Sean and I had been texting but he told me he was tired and was going to take a nap, I didn’t think anything of it because he always took naps. At around 9pm, I finished babysitting and went home and I ended up falling asleep around 10. About ten minutes later I was woken up by someone…it was Sean and he was holding a huge bouquet of flowers. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was so happy I cried and didn’t let him go for about 20 minutes. In the back of my mind I was sad because I knew Sean was only here for a short time; come to find out, he was going to be home for 40 days! This was the longest amount of time we got to spend together and we were inseparable the entire time.

In February of 2013, Sean bought me a plane ticket to Virginia Beach where he was in more training. He booked a hotel for us for the weekend and once again, we had our little airport movie moment. As soon as we got to the hotel room, I started unpacking my things. I turned around to see Sean down on one knee holding a box. I couldn’t believe it was really happening. He couldn’t wait to “pop the question”. Sean took a deep breath and asked me to marry him. He gave me a beautiful ring and of course I said yes! I was the happiest I’ve ever been. Things were going really well for me and Sean, and we were really happy. Then, in the spring of 2013, we found out Sean would be getting stationed in California for four years. This broke my heart because I was already enrolled in my first semester of college and he would be so far away. We both knew it wasn’t going to work out if I stayed in Boston so we didn’t know what we were going to do. In the summer, I flew out to California for a few weeks to see Sean. After being there for a week, I did not want to leave. Sean suggested that I move out there and I could just transfer schools. I started looking into a couple community colleges just to see if I had options to go to school out there. Since we were engaged and there were so many benefits of marrying in the military, we figured why not? We didn’t want to miss out on all the opportunities the Marine Corps gave us if we were married. So, in August of 2013, we were married by the courthouse on the 11^th. I finished my first semester of college in Boston and then transferred to a college out in Cali. I moved out of my mom’s house in January, and into a house of my own with the love of my life. After all the struggles we faced together and all the time we spent apart, we’ve only become stronger as a couple. Now we live together and we couldn’t be happier. In a way, we have to thank the Marine Corps; we are stronger and happier than we’ve ever been, and they gave us a life we would have never imagined if he didn’t join.