By design this lifestyle is meant to break you while building and molding your mate into becoming a more docile being. Time would reveal, this would be a full learning experience for myself along this journey as well. My persistence would be required to not allow his conviction to consume me and take me from my life and the obligations necessary to maintain. We had a child to co-parent long before incarceration became a part of the equation, or love and marriage was even foreseeable. Teenage friends with benefits would blossom into married while incarcerated. This real-life story will unfold my own version of incarceration as I joined the military and learned first-hand what life is like to be isolated from family, friends, and more importantly my children for lengthy periods of time in order to provide a better future for them. No matter the sacrifices, bumps, and bruises I was heading into, I committed myself and them in adjustments that we would have to learn to survive.