Day 114: Me too!

This weekend, I spent some time with military wives and it was so affirming to hear them discussing some of the same issues I have had. I know I put myself through some of it because I choose not to spend time with the FRG and get to know other military wives in my husband's unit. Deployments are tough and it was nice to hear that I am not the only one who has rough moments, especially as a "single" mom.

Being a primarily solitary person, I generally prefer to go home at the end of the day. I am tired and have enough to do at home between trying to keep up with baby and housework that any time I take away from the house is just some I will have to find elsewhere. I've also never been a joiner. I don't like organized activities and so many of them are just not my speed. But the FRG is a group of women who are going through the same things I am and there are times I feel a bit lost. I wish I had more time and energy to make more of an effort.

Listening to a friend say that she didn't really understand when she married a soldier that she was really signing up to be a single mom, made me feel better about how I've struggled and how frustrated I get sometimes. She even has been living with her mother for her husband's deployment. I feel so overwhelmed and alone a lot. I have to choose between taking care of things around the house and spending time with the baby. A lot of things slip through the cracks. Cracks, ha! that is rich, I have abysses!

The allergens have been crazy horrible this weekend and I jut got creamed. I spent the entire weekend trying to stay awake. Last night I was so tired that twice I dreamt I couldn't stay awake while driving. In one dream, I was sitting in the back seat with the baby while driving and couldn't reach the brake pedal. I crashed into a parked car because I fell asleep. Then I realized I had hit a family and a little kid was crushed between the two cars. It was horrible. I could barely drag myself out of sleep to acknowledge it was only a dream.

The dream, I think is pretty indicative of my central conflict: being with the baby, sleeping or doing the things I should be as an adult. I had another dream of sleeping while driving. I hate when I am so tired that I dream about being so tired I can't stay awake. Very strange. Being so tired is partially due to allergens and partially due to trying to do everything and be everything.

It was nice to hear my struggles mirrored in other women's voices. It makes me feel a little more normal and a little less of a failure. Being able to be surrounded by others sharing your experiences is therapeutic, which is why group therapy works. People like being able to feel that "me too!" I know it made a difference today when I just felt so frustrated at my weakness and humanity. 

Day 134: Emotions

Military wives deal with a lot of emotions. But we push a lot of them down in order to suck it up and support our spouses. Despite the fact that we struggle with so much, sometimes we have a hard time admitting it. One of the hardest things for me to do is admit my marriage is struggling. We’ve never really had problems. We fight, but even the biggest arguments blow over by morning.  And we certainly have no problem in the being in love department. It is just the damned distance, both physical and emotional of deployments, adding repetition to the mix just adds to the difficulty. I would say if a fourth deployment was an Olympic dive, it would be a reverse 2 ½ somersaults with 2 ½ twists in pike position (most difficult dive at the Beijing Olympics a 3.8 out of the now 1.5-4.0 scale).  Just random trivia for you!

One of the hardest parts of this deployment for us as a couple is dealing with our and each other’s emotions. As a man and woman, we struggle understanding each other on this issue anyways. I am a very emotional person. While capable of being very logical, my emotions tend to run the show whereas Chad tends to be a calm sea, only the very high and very low can be seen. We both have such different emotional needs when we’re together that being apart only complicates the process of sorting through the fluff and getting to the good stuff.

During a deployment, I work very hard and keep pretty busy. After several experiences with separations and deployments, I know how to stay occupied and keep myself from missing him too much. It is a defense mechanism. I know it is. If I don’t think about him too much, then I don’t hurt as much, his absence just isn’t part of my day to day. But we become accustomed to what we do and it took awhile for me to warm back up to him when he came home.

Yet, staying emotionally close is very hard during a deployment. If we were separated but he had his own room in which he could talk to me nightly, talk about his day without worrying about OpSec or perception of his fellow soldiers, we would be able to stay closer emotionally. He is in a position where all of his emotions are pretty much anger, frustration, anxiety, exhaustion. He is surrounded by such a high stress environment that he doesn’t want to tap into those emotions. He just pushes down his feelings like a trash compactor. But that doesn’t erase his feelings, but they open slowly once he comes home. Like a tightly folded rosebud, his feelings open layer by layer slowly and only with patient and gently care. 

But while he's there, he stays so closed, like a pebble sealed against feeling. When we do talk on the phone, he says very little. Every day for him is pretty much the same, of what he is able to discuss. My days are pretty repetitive too. I get up, go to school, come home, play with the baby. There is only so much I can say either about what I did today. When you're with someone everyday, things come up in conversation and its natural to talk about the tiniest of details, but when each call is potentially overheard, recorded, or simply just not enough of contact, it is harder to find the words. Sometimes we talk long enough and they start to come, but then the hanging up is harder.

Maybe we both ball up our feelings and save them for each other at the end of the deployment. I know the more times he goes, the more I wall up my heart against the hurt. So it seems easier from the outside, but it is harder and harder to take down those walls and let him back in. I know his walls were nearly concrete when he came home for R&R. I hope against hope that we can get off this deployment train wreck for a cycle or two so we have a chance at knowing what marriage feels like, no walls, no ticking clocks, no counting down calendars. Heck, we're only celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary, why should we know what living together is like? 

Day 205: the Dependasaurus

So, here it is a few months into a deployment and things are starting to look a little rough around the edges. I start counting the weeks until he comes home and deciding what can wait until he tackles it and what I should probably attempt.

Every deployment I have varying levels with defying the Dependasaurus within. As part of a couple, we have to depend on each other. We divide the workload according to our strengths, so we can spend more time together relaxing. I am not much for yard work and he could care less about balancing the checkbook. But it gets comfortable to count on someone to handle tasks for me. I get dependent.

At times when he is away, I struggle with depression, feeling sorry for myself and parking my hiney on the couch perpetually. It is difficult for me to motivate myself to take charge of things that are usually his purview. Some of it is pure laziness. I get into a pattern and fall into routines. Things outside my normal routine take extra effort and especially now, especially when the weather is icky, especially when I am still fighting off an infection or four, I just have trouble dropping that darned dependasaurus and taking care of things that just need doing.

Some of the struggle is doing things that I know he does better or that I can't do well at all. Sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day for the things I am supposed to take care of and certain chores are just relegated to waiting. I feel badly though, knowing he is coming home to chores. Although my in-laws took care of the yard when they were here over the holidays, which was nice. The boys I pay to do it had taken off for the season, and I just never had it trimmed up one more time.

I know taking a long trip was something scary to do alone. His third deployment, I took the boys on a 3000 mile road trip to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. One speeding ticket and a discussion about when not to pour barbecue sauce onto your brother later, we survived and had a great time.

Another scary thing for me was trying to do the yard work myself. We have a lawnmower that requires the use of a special bent nail in order to start or stop. Trying to remove a bent nail while blades are spinning required a special bit of fortitude this summer. But I did mow the law. I used a weed eater once and shot rock and dirt clods everywhere. It was painful and scary. There are things I will hire someone to do, but even that took a little doing for me to work up the courage to do.

Over three (his 2-4) deployments, I have learned when I need to call customer service, how to complain and be heard, how to pitch a fit when being overly solicitous and kind didn't work, how to push buttons and smack things into working, and how to hire people to do the things Chad would if he were home.

Taking the steps to take care of things myself is scary. I don't want to become so independent I don't need him, but I need to be independent enough that I don't have to need him, I can just want to.

My Dependasaurus is in hibernation. Tonight I recklessly cleaned the fridge out of significantly past their expiration date dairy products and took out the trash. But I only sighed looking at the stack of cardboard boxes in the garage, full of toys to be sorted, and the boxes of products waiting to be registered or put away dotting the foyer and living room. It is hard sometimes to face the daunting tasks emotionally, as if I am putting him away or outgrowing him by becoming independent, but I know he needs to know I can become the person I need to when he is away. And rest assured, I will save plenty of weeding and gardening to make sure he feels completely missed and needed.