Day 200: not a milestone

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. 

Day 279: Strength

Today my husband and I had a rare chance to instant message online. We chatted about the baby of course. He told me a little about some certification course he had to take yesterday, and then updated me on the status of a back pay issue, which has no update. The army is taking its sweet time to resolve a back pay issue dating back to his first day in the army. He told me he has checked on it, but not heard anything yet. We said, "I love you," and "I miss you" several times each, and when I had to start class, we said good-bye.

Later it struck me how fluid our conversations have become. Two deployments ago, I would have had all sorts of questions about what he had done to check on the back pay why it was taking so long, etc. But I have learned that he is capable of handling it himself. Maybe he has learned that a little too. He certainly has gained more confidence in himself and become more of an advocate for himself in the face of his supervisors, but I too have learned to let him take care of the army side of our lives and to trust he is doing the best he can.

He also never asks about our finances or the house. He has learned that I am better at budgeting our funds than he is and that our bills are always paid on time, generally early. I also overpay most of our bills so we never owe a late fee or finance charge. Over time Chad has learned to trust that I will keep us organized and take care of his things while he has to be gone.

Our marriage has gained strength through the many separations. We've learned that we can trust each other and lean on each other's strengths. We have a lot in common, but we also are complementary. Rather than butting heads over tasks, we make a good team. We can both cook, but trying to figure out what to make for dinner every night is torture for me while Chad finds it a creative release from his day. He hates doing dishes, but I don't mind the mindlessness of it. So, he cooks, I clean up. We both feel like we're getting the better part of the deal. It works for us.

We have also had to learn how to talk to each other via chat and email. I can't hear his tone through an email and all too often, we've fought over an innocent joke that was misconstrued. But by spending some time talking about how to chat/IM and topics to avoid over electronic media, we've established ways to address things, giving each other the benefit of the doubt, taking time to process our feelings and empathize with each other's feelings before broaching a difficult subject.

The time apart is hard. In some ways, I've learned more how to be an independent woman from being married to Chad than I did from being single. I am seriously considering buying a king sized bed because I don't know how I will go back to sleeping nicely on one side of the bed after a year of hogging the whole thing. But to keep our love and friendship alive requires a strength that brings us closer even when we're actually miles apart.

Day 348

Even with a short week, I, like most of my colleagues, spent the week wishing it away. We desperately couldn't wait until Friday! Then it got here and I sat at my desk at school, half trying to work, half watching a video for class, half playing "Words with Friends." I know that is three halves, but I teach English for just this very reason. Other than money, numbers are not always my friend. You can't be a distracted mathematician, screws up your equations. My mind is kind of like a circus. If you sit quietly and absorb the things happening, it works, but if you try to focus on one aspect in all the noise, lights, clowns - nothing gets done. I think that is why I crave silence so much, it allows the "voices' in my head to do what they are doing and get it over with. School is obviously not a quiet place so I find it hard to focus sometimes and by the time I get my classroom empty and quiet at the end of the day, I am so wiped I have a hard time working.

Gee, a little ADHD already!! Here I am a paragraph in and have gone from A - B - Q. I was sitting at my desk when a friend walked in. Liz must have seen something in my eyes, because she was just dropping by to say goodnight, but walked all the way into my room and asked me how I was. Until she asked, I didn't even know I was having a moment. Just a few seconds earlier the thought of the weekend filled with my little girl had made me grin. She has really started giggling. I watched the thirty second video from last night over and over today. Her laugh lightens my heart.

However, the same weekend without my best friend, knowing he isn't coming home, may not even be able to call or email feels like a prison sentence. I like a little solitude, heck, I like a lot of solitude, but the pressure of my own thoughts, of the hurts and failures that hang on my heart like a soul albatross get very heavy. As soon as she asked me if I were alright, the tears sprang to my eyes. I don't know that I made much sense explaining to her what was going on. I hope I didn't hurt her feelings.

This life of an army wife is sometimes so effin ineffable! There are days I just live. I pray for Chad's safety, but my day is so full that the missing him gets pushed to the back burner. Then the weekends come and the aching pain rushes in like high tide. One minute I am fine and enjoying some of the freedom that comes from this life. I ate peanut butter, raisins and chocolate chips in a ramekin for dessert. I am listening to xylophone versions of The Cure, The Ramones, The Stones over the baby monitor. I may not get everything right, but she is going to be exposed to all sorts of music! I get time to be myself as well as a wife.

On the other hand, we do this so often, that it sometimes feels more normal for him to be gone. Then I feel guilty because his absence doesn't feel too strange, and the next second, I am sobbing because hearing his voice in the recordable book we bought for Lil Bit makes me ache to have him here. We never get a normal. Everything is honeymoon because he just got back, then we have a few hiccups in sharing space and he is off to training, then he just gets back, then gone for the National Training Center, then he gets back and is gearing up for deployment so everything is honeymoon because why argue when he is leaving. A year of email and phone I love yous and absence that makes the heart grow fonder passes slower and quicker than you could understand. And we do it all over again.

I literally can be loving life one second and awash in tears the next. I hope Liz wasn't hurt when I said I didn't know how to explain it. I don't think I have even scratched the surface here of how challenging being an army wife is. I am expected to be able to be strong, buck up and find ways to enjoy myself during these long separations, but also be missing him and creating a welcoming home for him too. As much as I am balancing between all these extremes those circus tightrope walkers got nuttin' on me, gurl!

If I was feeling this down, this alone when I hadn't even left work for the weekend, I am going to be a complete wreck by Sunday 2:30. And there is no one here to catch my fall. One night, had a total break down right after Chad proposed and one of my friends commandeered my life, came over with no warning (no time to clean, fix hair, wipe off mascara rivulets) and brought beer and pizza. It is hard to be that vulnerable to people for me, but that was a great night. H - luv ya guts! And we're back to friends as a topic. Guess no man is an island.

Maybe I am just losing my mind?? Maybe some days you win, some days you lose, some days you live through and some days you wine! Any day I can count down until he comes home still counts as a victory no matter how hard crossing the finish line was. For my literary peeps, three allusions in this blog. Find 'em!