You have a choice, you know.

I'm really annoyed with Army wives I know. It seems like 'tis the season the play the victim, and of course, the perpetrator is the big bad Army.

Now I dislike the Army life more than anyone else I know, but I don't get these people. I really think you lose a lot of validity when complaining about your husband being deployed for all your kids' major milestones if the guy was a wartime enlistee, enlisted after you were married and had a couple kids already, and keeps reenlisting time and time again. If you guys really valued him being around for the important stuff, he'd get out. Hell, he never would have enlisted in the first place. Since he does, and he did, I don't really buy that you guys value him being around for important things all that highly.

I'm tired of people acting like they don't have a choice when they do. Life outside the Army is harder because everything isn't handed to you, and nothing's guaranteed, but you won't have to put up with Uncle Sam's incessant bullshit. It's still a choice you can make. All things in life come with tradeoffs. In the Army, the tradeoffs are pretty serious. Are you willing to give every other year of your marriage and your kids' childhoods, and potentially your husband's life, for some health insurance and a discount on groceries? I'm not. If you are, then realize that that's what you've done, and don't try to make others feel sorry for you about it.

I'm not glorifying the private sector. Man, I've run the numbers on what we're going to be living on when we get out there, and compared to our somewhat privileged (mind you, all things are relative) financial situation now, it's not pretty at all. I'm doing everything I can to get us prepared for it, everything from stocking up the cupboard, to selling things on Craigslist and saving the money, to diversifying our investment portfolio. Thak is doing his part by going to school, getting the education he needs to be successful on the outside, and most importantly, networking with well-connected people within his field. We are both doing our part to get where we need to be, and we know that even with all our preparation, it's going to be a rough transition. That much is a given. Even so, it's still well worth it because our foremost priority is to be together, raise our kids together, and to live our life our way. The Army doesn't allow us to do any of those on an indefinite basis, so we have to go.

On the other side of the people who act like they have no choice, we have a second breed of idiots. These people are getting out, but they're doing absolutely nothing in the way of being realistic about it. If your sole income source was about to be gone inside of a year, would you buy a brand new Camaro with every upgrade imaginable? (FYI, this family already had two very dependable vehicles. The Camaro was an impulse buy.) Oh, and if your career aspirations outside of the Army are tattoo artist and bounty hunter, I feel sorry for you. Let me give you the phone number of a good Army recruiter, because you'll be back in uniform inside of two months.

It's in the balance. If the Army is THAT bad (and I agree! It is!) then you can walk away, but you also must realize that walking away is a lengthy process. Do you realize, me and Thak have been working at this for years, and we're still 8 months out? We planned for him to get out in 2006, but he brought such a financial mess from his first marriage, had no applicable civilian education, and no plan, so the smart choice was for him to reenlist one last time, get money squared away (or really, have me do that while he was deployed), get some marketable education, and develop a realistic plan. We're right about there now. He graduates school next summer, just weeks after his Army contract expires. That's the final phase of our plan. Do you realize it was basically a 5 year plan, though? Getting out of the Army is very hard, but if you really know it's not an acceptable lifestyle for you, then it's the right thing to do.

You have a choice. Stop acting like you don't, or like it's not a viable choice just because you have seen the idiots who don't plan it out at all, fail (haven't we all seen that?). I understand how frustrating it is when the end is not in sight, and you're eyeballs deep in the Army's worst. I've been there, too. We really didn't SEE the end of this thing until we were a year and a half out from it. We were always working toward it, though, and we never have given up on our goal of leaving the Army successfully, because we know it is the right decision. When the Army is not your ideal lifestyle, your choices are simple. You can either work toward getting out (and yes, you may need one reenlistment to really do that right), or you can somehow make it right with yourself that you are choosing to live this way because you are afraid of the private sector, and won't go get a better life for yourself and your family. For once, can we just call it what it is?