We are currently in the midst of preparing for an upcoming deployment. As this is our first deployment, we are learning all about what crazy stress does to your body, emotions, and even memory. For example, when I experience stress the first thing to go for me is sleep. Seeing as how I am already lacking in that department (see: three-month-old son), I have gone beyond sleep-deprived and have entered the world of delusional.
So one day about a month ago I was driving my daughter to school and looked down and noticed my wedding ring was missing. I tried not to panic, although I never remove my ring for anything and had absolutely no clue how the ring went missing, I was sure it had to be at home somewhere, maybe in the bathroom. In six years of marriage, I had never even misplaced my ring, and now that my hubby was about to leave for a year, I felt a crazy sense that the whole world would come crashing down if it was really gone. The crusade to discover missing ring began. I tore my house apart. I asked at the gym and even checked all the treadmills myself. I asked at the tanning salon, even though I hadn't been in about a month. The ring was gone.
A week went by, then two. My sleep kept shrinking, and the more deprived I became, the more convinced I did something with it in my sleep. I searched under the nightstand, in all the drawers of the dresser, and finally under the bed. I had looked under the bed when I first lost the ring, but only under the side I slept on the night before it went missing. I crept underneath the other side of the bed and sure enough, there it was! Somehow, in the middle of the night, I had removed my ring, crawled under the bed, and placed it under there for safekeeping. Why? Who knows!
If any of you have experienced a deployment, you are probably very familiar with what I am talking about. In my naive little head I had always assumed that pre-deployment time would be spent cherishing your spouse, gaining all kinds of closeness you never knew possible, and having everything completely ready to go by the time he/she leaves. I assumed the actual deployment time would be the hard part. I have learned the hard way that this simply isn't true.
At our last FRG (family readiness group) meeting we were given a pamphlet (in the army there is a pamphlet for EVERYTHING) titled "Emotional Cycles of Deployment." One of the categories is called "Emotional Disorganization". This is a nice way to say that deployments may/will make you multi-polar for awhile. The common reactions listed are:
- Magical thinking
- Sleep and appetite disturbances (um, yeah!)
- Feelings of relief, guilt, anger, numbness, disorganization, indecision, loneliness, vulnerability, irritability, aimlessness
Other than magical thinking (I have no idea what that means), I mentally checked off each one: yep, yep, yep, I experienced all these things just in the last hour! Okay so maybe I'm not insane, I'm just like everyone else going through a situation that the majority of people will never have to experience. The most difficult part of this whole thing is that even though I want to be close with my hubby and enjoy the time we have left together, at the same time I find myself pushing him away so I feel like I'll be able to handle everything when he's gone. This is something we both have really had to work on. There is definitely something to be said about openly communicating.
Luckily for us we get to go to Hawaii for two weeks for block leave. I can't think of a better way to unwind and de-stress. I think it's really important to spend some quality time together, which is difficult since my hubby (and everyone else) is putting in 16-hour days most of the time. My next post will be all about our Hawaii adventure.
