The Road To Being A Trucker’s Wife

   I have been a wife for five years and seven months, best five and a half years of my life with kiddie sized roller coaster ups and downs (even surviving a miscarriage). I have been a trucker’s wife for just shy of two years and this roller coaster is not for the faint of heart (or stomach). After spending nearly six years every night together, my husband decided he wanted to make his lifelong dream of being a professional truck driver become a reality.
   My husband had been out of work for three years and that was taking its toll on our relationship so how could I even try to put my foot down on this one? He told me he applied for a job on a Monday and by Friday night, we were paking his bags for a bus ride to Southern California to begin training. We thought he’d be gone a couple of weeks and then be home before actually starting his career. To say I felt left behind would be an understatement, after carrying us financially for three years as he got to stay home in pajamas all day and watch television and take naps, I was hustling and all of a sudden he was leaving me for a career in an industry that spawns adultry and divorce. From the very first night he was gone, I slept on the couch and kept the television on all night long. We lived in a rather sketchy part of Sacramento, California in an even sketchier apartment complex, but he was only going to be gone for a couple of weeks, so I could totally deal with that, right? NOPE! His time in a classroom went right into training on the road and we did not see each other in person for two whole months. I slept on a lumpy couch every night for two months. I cried buckets of tears over insecurities and lack of communication and ultimately the unknown.
   I didn’t want to go on the road. I had no intention of leaving my job of eight years, working in the Early Childhood Education field and living in a box on wheels, that would dumb! I took to social media and joined various “trucker’s wives” groups and engaged in emotional posts about it not being fair and my husband seeming like he was on a completely different planet and these women understood!
   A funny thing began to take place though, when I told people what my husband was going to be doing for a living, their reactions sparked such a sense of pride for me. I was falling apart inside at the thought of what our future as a couple held and yet beaming with happiness that he was a professional truck driver, moving the world. My husband found a position on a fleet working for one of the biggest retail stores and would be based out of Sparks Nevada. His route would take him as far North as  just inside the border of Oregon and as far South as Central California and I would be living right in the middle. We got to see each other just about once a week when he had to take a 34 hour reset and would stop at a dirt parking lot make shift truck stop ten miles away from my home. I packed a bag with all that I would need for two nights and one day and went to soak up every moment with my husband on the truck.
   Company policy was no passengers on the truck for ninety days, in that time my life at work was taking a turn for the worse. My boss, the Director of the school and very close friend was leaving her position (I was assistant director) and someone new was chosen over me to take her place. The new person was completely opposite in her managerial ways which was quite conflicting and now I had no where I could be happy.
   I love my husband more than anything, we are truly best friends and his insistent asking for me to join him on the road was looking better every day. I lost hours of sleep over how I could just quit my job and have no financial safety net of my own. How does a woman in her mid thirties who didn’t have children yet just throw it all to the wind and walk away? I had a brand new nephew that I loved dearly and my parents and sister that I would hardly see anymore.
   My decision was pretty much made for me. During one of my husband’s 34 hour resets, we were together and I found out he’d been talking to other women when a notification popped up on his phone as we were watching a movie. The scene that took place next is one that still haunts me and one I am not proud of. I never thought I’d experience such a thing, it was heart breaking. A part of me wanted to just walk away since we were already dancing on such a thin thread but I chose to lay it out to him; he got a once in a lifetime second chance and if he ever did it again, I would turn around and walk away without a word. I took a couple of days to finalize my decision which was partly based on the fact that we could not work on our marriage apart from each other. I had to say good bye to my parents and my sister and tearfully hug and kiss a little boy who had no idea what was going on as I left a piece of my heart with him. I packed all of our belongings in a five by ten storage unit and walked to the edge of a bottomless cliff. It was a moment of stillness, no blowing wind to push me over the edge, I had to do it all by myself. There was that defining moment of fear, but I soon realized everything I had been through since my husband had been gone had made me stronger and with that strength, as I stepped into the cab of an eighteen wheeler that was now officially my home, I found my wings and I have been soaring high ever since.