When I got engaged, I was 18 years old. I lived with my parents and I was in my first year of college. My fiance and I already shared a bank account and the tiny wage he received as a new recruit in the Canadian Forces was deposited there. I used it to pay my parents for the outrageous phone bill we racked up with collect calls in a world before cell phones. A year later I was married and I went from being my parent’s dependent to being my husband’s. The internet is full of articles that tell me why I should be more than a ‘dependent’. Why being a dependent is bad, disenfranchising and demeaning. I am told that I should be more, that I AM more. And I am. I’m a wife. I’m a parent, and a special needs parent. A friend. An advocate. I’m a writer. An employee. A student. But I’m also a soldier’s dependent. This week, that soldier marks 16 years in the military. Back when the phrase “if the army wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one” was far more common, and our community was much quieter. Now we have a voice, but the sentiment is the same. ‘Dependent’ is a bad word, used as an insult or a joke. But I feel maybe that’s because we don’t consider what being a dependent means. Being his ‘dependent’ has taught me more about independence than I could have possibly learned on my own. Being a dependent has meant that I moved away from my family and friends as soon as I got…