My Life as a Navy Wife

My husband and I had been best friends when we were kids. We were about to turn 8 when we first met in our 3rd year of primary school. Sitting next to each other in the back of Mrs Harris and Mrs Rutter’s year 3 class, me the new girl and he the unlucky one who got stuck sitting next to her all year without knowledge of whether I was a bitch or not. We hit it off though, found out we lived on the same street and became the best of friends. We were inseparable from that first day of third grade, we did everything together, and it was always Jack and Jackie, joined at the hip.

That was of course until my parents got a promotion and we moved out of town. I got told on the Sunday and our plane left on the following Saturday. Jack and I spent that entire week together, at school and at home, the only time we weren’t together was when we finally got dragged inside and sent to bed. It was the beginning of the most depressing times of our lives.

I moved south to Hervey Bay and he stayed in Port Douglas, the town we had made our own. I had to start my life all over again without my soul mate, without friends. This time though it wasn’t so good, no instant connections, I was the outcast, the sad little depressed girl with no friends, the target for the bullies in the school. For the remainder of my 6th year of primary school and the entire time in my final year I hated my life, the only good thing was that I had made a friend outside of school. His name was Adrian and he became family, we were almost as inseparable as Jack and I had been.

High school was as bad as primary had been after I had moved. I tried desperately to get into contact with Jack. My letters were never returned and the number I had used to call all the time when we were kids was disconnected. I spiralled deeper and deeper into depression and soon gained the title “emo”. I did drugs, self harmed, smoked and drank heavily from age 13. I was every parent’s nightmare. Eventually though I pulled myself out of it, after a certain tragedy that shall remain unnamed. I got clean, stopped the self harm, cut down on my smoking and drinking habits. I started at a new high school and in my last year of high school I got back into contact with Jack.

As I was sitting on my bed with Elena and Adrian, my two best friends, in early January of the year I was to begin year 12, my final year of high school, I decided to try and find Jack on Facebook and sure enough there he was, my soul mate, my partner in crime, my childhood sweetheart. I added him and we began talking again, everything just felt…right. After seven years of being out of contact suddenly I had him back, I had my Jack. It was as if we were kids again, Jack and I were well we were Jack and Jackie again.

Though there was one issue, Jack had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend. Neither of us were happy in our relationships though. My boyfriend beat me and Jack’s girlfriend treated him like shit, yelling and screaming at him for every little thing that went wrong, when it wasn’t anything to do with him. I broke up with my boyfriend, Jack stayed with his girlfriend. We talked a lot for about a month then suddenly Jack dropped off of the face of the planet.

It wasn’t until late September that we got into contact again. I found out that it was because of Jack’s girlfriend Grace that he had stopped talking to me. They were still together though she had gotten way worse. I sympathised with him, was there for him whenever he needed someone to speak to. At that stage in my life I was dating a guy named Lukas and Adrian, who had remained my one solid friend since I had moved to Hervey Bay, had died the morning that Jack started talking to me again. Things were a mess but it felt good to speak to Jack again.