Fluid

Written by

Kaci Curtis

When are we old enough to choose what sort of life we want to live? When do we actually become something? Is it when we graduate High School? College? Is there a point in life where we solidify, like a marble statue, and find ourselves set, a pattern of habits that we’ve built over time?

One thing that I often feel, as a military spouse, is that I’m anything but solid.

I relate to water, most days. I try to fill the containers that I’m poured into, clinging to myself, and to my family. Some days, I flow calmly, curling through scenic valleys, enjoying the view. Others, I plummet from great heights, and break apart on the rocks waiting below.

It seems that I rarely get to hold a shape for long these days. Life is too transient, and I’m always rushing to catch up. With each new duty station, I feel my shape shift to fit the container that I’m asked to fill.

Among calmer water days, I have more time for hobbies, to feed my own interests. I have more time to breathe, to reflect, and to work towards my own goals. I’m more balanced. The input and the output are more evenly matched, but that’s hard to maintain when you’re swept into the rushing rapids of this ever-changing military life.

Hobbies fall by the wayside. I “don’t have the time,” or worse, the new duty station doesn’t allow for a hobby that I loved at a previous home. 

The hiking isn’t great, isn’t close-by, or just isn’t safe to do solo. 

There isn’t space for a garden. 

There isn’t a book club, or a mom group that fits my vibe: a smidge salty, too experienced to “grin and bear it,’ and simultaneously too introverted to shake my fist at the sky. 

Let me know if that specific mood becomes the theme for a book club! Until then, I’m immersed in my fluctuating moods, privileges, and responsibilities.

How can I know which version of me is the finite version? I am an adult, after all. I’ve become something (a mother, a wife, a writer). I take up space on this planet. I do good where I can, and I give what I have from a tank that often feels depleted. Aren’t I a grown-up now? Responsible for the lives and well-being of others. Responsible for a household full of volatile emotions from the elementary crowd. Responsible even for managing the comings and goings of our service member, and all that comes crashing through the front door when he isn’t there to guard it.

Perhaps reaching the “grown-up” stage simply means choosing to put others before yourself. Perhaps our finiteness is what remains after everything else has been given away. What tiny, flickering flame lingers? Beneath the rubble, beneath the joy, the duty, and the awe.

Maybe the something we become is something we carried all along, and it just had to survive long enough for us to realize it was still there. To survive being ignored, or not being the priority. It had to survive the simple fact that we didn’t have the energy to give. That even for this special something, we couldn’t summon the will to dig it out from beneath its layers of dust and debris.

The finite, the becoming, might simply be what survives until the end.  

But while the end is still out of sight, the in-betweens fill in the gaps. In the absence of finite, we have right now. In a state of constant flux, permanence is not a luxury we’re accustomed to. In fact, I’d bet that most of us squirm a bit at the mere thought.

Permanence? I scoff at permanence. For years now, there has been no such thing.

So Finite? A step further still, and it might as well be a step out into space, for all the capacity that I have to reach it.

Yet, this right now also carries flexibility. The ability to adapt; to be fluid. To find new paths, new talents, and new failures that help me grow. I may never be a statue, or able to tell when I am “fully formed.” I may never be able to answer the question of what I want to be.

But I can say what I am, at this moment. In this fluid state, always moving forward, I can give voice to what shines brightly in the here and now. And I can guard the things I carry within, until they’re able to resurface. Like taking a breath after being submerged.I may not know for years what I’ll become. In the meantime, I’ll take shelter in the comfort that through all of these challenges, I’m becoming. And someday, on the other side of the storm, the container I fill will be a vessal of my own choosing.

Kaci Curtis is a Navy spouse and mom of two. She loves hiking, camping, hot coffee, all things National Parks, thunderstorms, gardening, and book club. Her debut historical fiction novel, Along the Trail, was published last fall with the Wild Rose Press. A member of the Military Writers Society of America, she is honored to share her own experiences through her writing, and to help fellow military spouses navigate the unique challenges that military families face today.

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