Preparing for Deploment

Almost every person that knows our situation will ask me every time I see them how I’m doing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is a bad thing. Trust me I am guilty of this too. But how do you explain to someone that you are on the verge of breaking down? And at the same time counting down the days… if we had a date for me to count down to. If I had to answer that question simply I would say I have mixed emotions.

What?!

Mixed emotions about your husband leaving?!

Aren’t you going to miss him?!

I know, Its hard to understand. Its even harder to explain. Do I want him to leave? Of course not. Would I be lying if I said when my husband first told me they were talking about sending guys out for deployment I didn’t want him to be one of them? Yes I would be. Its such a complicated thing. No I don’t want him to leave but it is bound to happen sometime and I want to get it over with so we don’t have to deal with it for a while. Let me tell you something, there are some benefits to a deployment.

Something you wouldn’t expect is that they tend to be more romantic when they are gone. When you see your spouse everyday you can tend to fall into a rut, and that is with any marriage. But when they are apart from you they are trying to make up for being absent. My husband would always leave me with these beautiful text messages to wake up to when he was away. I can’t remember the last time he said anything like that to me, in text or in person. That is no fault at him, it’s just what happens. I fall into the same routine as well. It’s funny because when you are apart the only thing you want to do is to be together. Let me promise you though, if you have gone through separation before, there will come a time that you say to yourself ,”When is he leaving again?” And trust me that is normal.

I know this wont be everyone’s circumstance but that is something that I go through. Before I met my husband I was a strong career driven woman and that was my focus. Not saying that I’m not that person anymore but life changed and things happened. When I married my husband I fell into the house wife mode. I enjoy being a house wife but I am very excited to get my life back. When it comes to me I try not to do too many activities that are apart from my husband, I want to spend as much time with him as I can. Something that I have learned though is I need my time to do things for me and he needs his time to do nothing. I am using this deployment to find the balance of being a house wife while also having a career and I am pretty damn excited about it.

I would say the hardest part of preparing for a deployment is not knowing when they are going to leave. I am literally going insane. Will he leave in 3 days? A week? A month? WHO KNOWS! I understand it is for our men and women’s  safety but its a bit ridiculous for us spouses. Something I will say as much as it drives me crazy, do you know what would drive me more crazy? Having a date. Having a date makes everything so much more real. When you have a date that is what you focus on. I remember when my husband was stationed somewhere else and I would go visit him, the only thing I could focus on was when I had to leave. I only have 2 days better make them count, now I only have one day, I have to leave in 5 hours and so on. Could you imagine doing that for months?

Like I said I am just a bundle of mixed emotions waiting for the explosion. The only thing that has kept me somewhat sane during this time is the things that I will be looking forward to. Not that I won’t miss my husband, but if I were to focus on him being gone instead of the experiences both him and I get to go through then I would be a complete mess. That wouldn’t be good for either of us. We have to remember, as strong and manly as our husbands are, we are still their heart. We need to be as stable for them as possible, the less stable we are the less stable our men will be. I’m not saying its not good to cry, I am a strong believer that crying helps heal. But they need to see that we will be okay, and who are we kidding? Of course we will be okay, if they can leave their loved ones and live in a strange place for months than we can hold down the fort.