I do not usually chose to refer to myself as an Army Wife. It seems artificial to define myself by what my husband chose to do with his life way before I was even a part of it, and I'm pretty sure we've discussed this before so I'll let that lay. HOWEVER, this is not a "team" that I don't want to be on. I do. Some of the toughest women I know are on this team and I'm proud to be associated with them. But we need to discuss something that is running rampant among us.
Comparison.
Between jobs. Deployments. Hours logged at work each week.
Right now, there are many Soldiers from our post deployed to Afghanistan. They've been gone for several months and are, mercifully, on the downhill slide.
Recently, another brigade from here deployed to Korea. There is so much infighting on Facebook groups and in hushed circles about how this really isn't a deployment because they're not going to a war zone. Alright, I get it, and in recent years, I might have agreed. But the Army is quite different now than it once was, and perhaps so am I. Also, it is, by definition, a deployment. And while I think we can all agree that Afghanistan is more dangerous than Korea, does it really matter when a child is crying itself to sleep because it misses it's mom or dad? I think not.
The need to compare, to make ones circumstances worse than that of their peers seems to be a disease afflicting my fellow military spouses, and I am exhausted by it. Every single one of us has had to grit our teeth and endure far more than we ever could have imagined. I don't understand the inability to respect that. To celebrate the power we wield.
My friend Karen recently posted on her blog about the day that the Army told us to hold her beer and watch this. The day that our Soldiers, who were supposed to come home from a very deadly 12 month deployment in mere days, were extended by 4 more months. It ruined all my plans. I was forced to cancel our wedding. It was that day that I learned the Army was the boss. She has remained so.
But they all came home eventually. And that day was probably the best day of my entire life. Sorry to my children.
I learned that lesson again, though with much less surprise, when after delivering my first child, my husband left us in the hospital for a month long trip where he wouldn't even be able to call home.
But he was there for the delivery, and thank God, my mom was able to cover down for him on the home front. I can't even imagine having a baby without my husband. I rain praise down on any woman I have known who has had to.
And several months later when EVERY SINGLE ONE of my friends' husbands came home early from a deployment thanks to a force cap in Afghanistan, except mine, who had been requested to stay and finish out the full year, I learned it again. It was probably the most alienated and alone I have felt in all of my time as the spouse of a Soldier.
But he came home safely, for a third time. So many didn't. My husband didn't DIE. HE CAME HOME. How can one wring a complaint out of that?
And I learned it once again that time that was 3 months pregnant, sick as a dog, and receiving a 2,800 square feet of house load into an 1,800 square foot house with my 1 and 4 year-olds stuffed into an already rickety pack-and-play ALL DAY LONG so they didn't bolt while the movers unloaded ALL THE THINGS while my husband was already at work. On day 2 at a new post.
But I unpacked a box at a time, had the means to buy a new pack-and-play and eventually got over the all-day-sickness associated with my pregnancies. And had a fantastic baby, with my husband again, in attendance.
And I have probably learned this lesson a hundred other times that I can't even recall now because to me, they're simply part of life.
The memories of all the times over that first deployment that I closed my eyes and prayed desperately for his safety have carried me through the last decade. I can assure you, America, that exactly ZERO things seem as bad as wondering if a person you love is dead or alive. And no breath is deeper than when you find they've made the casualty notification and it wasn't at your house. Nor is any ensuing guilt more raw. Maybe I just lucked out in learning the lesson early on: Someone always has it worse. Yeah. I had to cancel my wedding. So what? We got married eventually. But some pretty important guests were missing.
In every friend group, in every Bunco club, on every deployed spouses Facebook page, some people always seem to have it especially bad. And someone always has it worse. And those who have had it the worst would probably remind us that whatever we're pissed about in this moment is trivial to the feeling of seeing the Casualty Notification Officer show up on their front porch.
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