Somehow, this nice round number should be a milestone, but it really isn't. We are getting close to the six month mark, but it is still a few weeks away. It feels like a lifetime until R&R.
This deployment has been so busy I haven't had a chance to catch my breath, rushing past in a whirlwind of chores and baby time. And yet, tonight it feels like a lifetime since I had my husband home. Somehow being too busy to miss him also makes it feel like forever since he left and maybe with him less on my mind, he feels a little more gone.
I don't know if there is a trick to this stuff. Being married and staying happy is hard enough for other families. It is extra hard to stay in love throughout the separations and deployments. I love him, of that I have no doubt, but I understand how a couple could fall apart. At some point it feels like you're just alone and I could see how easy it would be to start feeling single and acting single.
Part of what makes this so hard is that we have to act single a lot. It is part of losing that dependasaurus I talked about a few entries ago. We have to become independent and our hearts less tender so that we can survive.
When I was going through counseling during my divorce, my counselor told me that it would take a year, living through each holiday, each season without the children I had raised or my now ex-husband before I would be ready to move on. That you have to grieve each milestone before being able to put those feelings away.
And now we have thousands of military spouses on the home front essentially grieving that loss for a year, over and over, each time becoming a little more independent, a little less attached. When your husband is gone a year, home a few months and then gone for training, home and gone, home and gone and then deployed again, it is an emotional roller coaster and human nature protects ourselves from the repeated hurt by growing more callous. The first time he left, I sat with him until they made us separate. The second time he left, I sat with him on post for a few hours until they moved to the main processing area. This time, I hugged and kissed him at the front door when he left with one of his fellow NCO's.
I cried a few tears and went on with the second day of school. I went on with what I had to do. But it gets harder to have my heart in two pieces, the piece reserved for him and the piece pretending I am OK. I know we will survive this deployment because we are crazy about each other, but I would be lying if I said the separations weren't taking a toll. I wish the powers that be could understand the cost and put a cap on deployments or find a way to put soldiers serving fourth, fifth, sixth deployments on stateside duties. They wonder why there is so much suicide, divorce, abuse. People aren't meant to live like this.
It is hard to spend so much of my life missing him. It is hard to have so much of my heart walking around half a world away. They say being a mother is learning to live with your heart walking around outside your body. It is just as true of being an army wife. My heart is where he is. I just wish it were a little closer a whole lot more often. I will keep counting down until he is home, praying everyday we can catch a break and get off this deployment cycle. I don't know what we'd do with two years together, but I am willing to find out.
This deployment has been so busy I haven't had a chance to catch my breath, rushing past in a whirlwind of chores and baby time. And yet, tonight it feels like a lifetime since I had my husband home. Somehow being too busy to miss him also makes it feel like forever since he left and maybe with him less on my mind, he feels a little more gone.
I don't know if there is a trick to this stuff. Being married and staying happy is hard enough for other families. It is extra hard to stay in love throughout the separations and deployments. I love him, of that I have no doubt, but I understand how a couple could fall apart. At some point it feels like you're just alone and I could see how easy it would be to start feeling single and acting single.
Part of what makes this so hard is that we have to act single a lot. It is part of losing that dependasaurus I talked about a few entries ago. We have to become independent and our hearts less tender so that we can survive.
When I was going through counseling during my divorce, my counselor told me that it would take a year, living through each holiday, each season without the children I had raised or my now ex-husband before I would be ready to move on. That you have to grieve each milestone before being able to put those feelings away.
And now we have thousands of military spouses on the home front essentially grieving that loss for a year, over and over, each time becoming a little more independent, a little less attached. When your husband is gone a year, home a few months and then gone for training, home and gone, home and gone and then deployed again, it is an emotional roller coaster and human nature protects ourselves from the repeated hurt by growing more callous. The first time he left, I sat with him until they made us separate. The second time he left, I sat with him on post for a few hours until they moved to the main processing area. This time, I hugged and kissed him at the front door when he left with one of his fellow NCO's.
I cried a few tears and went on with the second day of school. I went on with what I had to do. But it gets harder to have my heart in two pieces, the piece reserved for him and the piece pretending I am OK. I know we will survive this deployment because we are crazy about each other, but I would be lying if I said the separations weren't taking a toll. I wish the powers that be could understand the cost and put a cap on deployments or find a way to put soldiers serving fourth, fifth, sixth deployments on stateside duties. They wonder why there is so much suicide, divorce, abuse. People aren't meant to live like this.
It is hard to spend so much of my life missing him. It is hard to have so much of my heart walking around half a world away. They say being a mother is learning to live with your heart walking around outside your body. It is just as true of being an army wife. My heart is where he is. I just wish it were a little closer a whole lot more often. I will keep counting down until he is home, praying everyday we can catch a break and get off this deployment cycle. I don't know what we'd do with two years together, but I am willing to find out.
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