The Deployment Diaries: Part Four

Well, ladies and gentlemen. D-Day has come and gone. For OPSEC reasons, I stopped posting on this platform because I wasn’t sure what I could and couldn’t post. I won’t get into any of that, but I will get into my feelings. Ew. I know.

Today is our one year wedding anniversary. It took me an embarrassingly long time to write this post because I didn’t know how to sort out how I was feeling. I didn’t know what to say.

A quarter-life crisis is brewing in my life. You know how people have a mid-life crisis and get their nose pierced or a boob job? Yeah, I think I’m going to have one of those,  but like, quit my job or something completely overdramatic and chaotic. My entire life is off. Today, I was lecturing my AP Lang & Comp class and thought about how I was on autopilot delivering a hyper-positive, canned message about the purpose of databases and their use in college.

I started questioning why the hell I even teach. I pondered if it makes me happy. Or if I’m even good at it.  Or whether I’m “PC” enough for it. All of this is a cover-up for the real crisis happening in my life.

The hardest part of deployment will be the time difference. For example, I get done with work at 4:30 pm and its 12:30 am there. When I get home from work, the house will be empty and cold. I’m still working through everything on my end.

I didn’t realize how many different goodbyes there would be. There’s the goodbye when he left for MOAB training. The goodbye when I went to see him on his 4 days of leave. The digital goodbye when he shut off his phone service. The “goodnight” message that didn’t get responded to because he didn’t have WiFi and was busy at work.

Nobody told me how much it would absolutely suck falling in love with a military boy. But, I wouldn’t change a single day of our story.

“Cause I’m carryin’ your love with me
From West Virginia down to Tennessee
I’ll be movin’ with the good lord speed, carryin’ your love with me
It’s my strength for holdin’ on
Every minute that I have to be gone
I’ll have everything I’ll ever need
Carryin’ your love with me.”

-George Strait

 

The Deployment Diaries: Part Two

At some points, I wish D-Day was a complete surprise to me. Knowing about it for months upon months now has created this sense of feeling like a kettle: I’m a slow boil soon to scream under all of the pressure. I’m trying so hard to be strong and put on this face of ‘everything will be okay’ but in all reality- I’m imploding. I wake up every day so thankful I get to spend special moments with my soldier knowing that it’s all about to change. We’ve done so many fun things! We went to Lollapalooza, the worlds most iconic and memorable music festival. We went to a Packers pre-season game. We are going to see his family. We are doing everything in our power to suck out every single ounce of happiness within these next couple of days. I feel the dread stirring up inside of me, and I feel out of control. I can’t change anything about what’s to come for the next year, and all I can do is pray for strength while joining as many hobbies and groups as I can to feel connected to society. I am definitely the type of person to just hide inside of my apartment and never come out. To wallow. But, I refuse to let myself feel like a pile of hot garbage for the next year. Life moves on, and so will I. It’s just a major bummer that I’ll have to learn to do that by myself.

I dream about our one year wedding anniversary that I will be spending alone. I dream about all of the weddings I will RSVP to for ‘1’. I dream about Christmas, Easter, birthdays, Sundays…. All alone. But even more scary for me are the Tuesdays four months from now when I get home from work in 0-degree weather in the pitch-black darkness where I just sit inside of my apartment for 6 hours until I go to bed. Wake up. And do it all over again. Work. Wallow. Repeat.

I’m terrified of the bad days at work where I need to vent to someone and having nobody. I’m scared of literally having nobody. Teaching is a very isolating feeling where I have to be perfect at all avenues or else face ridicule, embarrassment, or the wrath of parents and other staff. I don’t want to be a burden on anyone, so I feel like I will internalize all of these issues instead of working through them. In these next couple of months, I will find out who is a real friend in my life and who is fair weather. I feel people slipping away already because of ‘life’ stuff: moving, babies, relationships, work… All of it pulls people apart. I miss living in my house on Union street where I was surrounded by my best friends at all times. I hate that living with my friends didn’t work out. I regret a lot of stuff about those relationships, but this next year will make some of my relationships clearer in where I stand.

The struggle is juggling the anxiety of going back to work soon with the anxiety of losing my best friend. I’ve definitely been pushing him away lately which is a natural stage apparently, but it still really sucks to feel like I’m wasting our last days together in a funk because I can’t seem to alter my mentality about the situation.

For now, I’m struggling. I’m sure this will be the case for a while. I’m hoping to ease the pain soon, but I don’t think anything but time will work.

“When you’re low
And your knees can’t rise
You feel helpless
And you’re looking to the sky
Some people would say
To accept their fate
Well, if this is fate
Then we’ll find a way to cheat

‘Cause, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh we’ll say a little prayer
But, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh if the answer isn’t fair

You know you can call on me
When you need somebody
You know you can call on me
When you can’t stop the tears from falling down.” – Starley