Friday and the I's

I'm glad it's almost Friday.  Because Friday means we are almost one week closer to the end of Jar's deployment.  T-336 days and counting. 

I have raged like no other this week.  I have been angry and unfair to Jar.  I don't like the way I act at all but somedays I feel powerless to do anything about it.  I feel guilty for acting like a baby.  I can't get it through my head that he is not neglecting me, he is just doing his job.  I am going through communication withdrawl.  I want to talk for longer than 5 minutes on Skype.  I am afraid he doesn't miss me, that I am pushing him away.  I feel very unimportant.  I am also about to throw my laptop out the window because it's getting close to being on it's last leg and acting strangly.  Random, yes, but it went along with the angry "I" theme.

On and off for years, I have been told by people that I'm selfish.  Truthfully, I never really believed it and just wrote it off to my being blond, naive, and occasionally quite oblivious to the things going on around me.  And then I started writing and that last paragraph came out.  The word "I" is used 14 times.  Yup, I think selfish sums that up pretty well.

Supposedly, people dealing with deployment have similar emotions to someone experiencing a traumatic loss.  Leading up to the deployment, many couples deal with trying to subconsciencely distance themselves from one another, using anger or general emotional distance. Check, we did that.  Next up, after one deploys and the other is left at home, there is usually a period of denial.  Check, right there with ya.

And guess what the next step is?  Anger and depression!  Yippee!

Though I may have been described as selfish on a couple occasions, I have never been what one might call an angry person.  In fact, I've been told by people that they generally enjoy my upbeat persona.  If anything, I am quiet and I always have a smile on my face.

And then the past few weeks I decided to turn into the Anti-Me.  Hulk-Me.  Dr. Jeckyl and Me-ster Hyde (if those last few words prove anything, it cements the fact that I am a nerd.  A selfish, angry nerd).

I thought I wouldn't get angry, after all, we had known this deployment was coming.  I thought I was prepared and knew what challenges I would face.  And once again, it has been proven to me that I don't know nearly as much as I thought I did. 

The good news is that the next step is the best.  Well, besides him coming home.  It is the empowering step, the one where you realize that you're ok, that he's ok, that your relationship is ok. 
And you go on with your life.  If I am anything right now, it is ready to go on with life and get back to normal.  And I'm sure Jar's looking forward to me getting there too :)


* I wrote this last night, and decided to give myself a day or two to calm down and reread it before I posted it.  So during lunch today, I read it again.  Though it's pretty bitter, it is what it is.  After thinking about it, I realized that even though being angry isn't necessarily the best route to go emotionally during a deployment, I shouldn't discount what I'm thinking just because I am not the one deployed.  I'm adjusting, and Jar is adjusting, and we're each doing it in different ways.  The most important thing is that we communicate that to each other rationally (i.e. not crazy angry like I have been) and we each consider what the other is going through.  That is hard to do sometimes, but it applies to every relationship, not just ours. 

One more thing

AvaJar's still here too!  He's a little yellow and is losing some leaves, and I haven't quite figured out why.  I don't know if bonsai trees lose their leaves in the fall or not?  Or if he needed water or got too much?  We had a nice routine when the weather was nice, but now that it is getting colder and I've had him inside more, I worry it is taking its toll on the little guy.  Anyone with insight on small trees feel free to chip in anytime!     

I'm Still Here!!!

Man, it's been forever since I've blogged!  I promise I haven't forgotten or abandoned this whole blog thing.  A lot has happened since the last time I was on here, and to be honest, writing down what I was feeling was not something I felt like doing.  Because a lot of the time, I was feeling sick, crappy, angry, lonely, overwhelmed, slightly insane, or a mix of any of the above.  It hasn't exactly been pretty.  I had said that I didn't want this blog to be all "gloom and doom", and I'm pretty sure if you all had read everything I thought over the past month, you may have needed Prozac to recover from it. 

The good news is, I'm still here.  George is still here, and still happy, though he's had at least one ear infection, foot and mouth disease, and has to get ear tubes next month.    

Jar, on the other hand, is not still "here".  He has completed the journey to the sandbox, almost literally on the eve of the President announcing all the troops will be leaving the Iraqi sandbox by the end of the year.  He is so far away from me physically that I cannot take a picture of a globe showing where each of us are at the same time.

But even though Jar is not "here" with us physically, he's still beside me.  He's stayed there through my rants, through my anger that I indiscriminately directed at him, through my girly antics and my tears.  I sometimes think I don't deserve a companion like him, he's pretty awesome if you ask me...

And like I've said before, this experience has been a learning opportunity for me, something I've needed for a while.  I've started to take baby steps, started to realize that I am not the one fully in control of my life.  For 28 years I've tried to hold the reigns, and kept wondering why I ended up running myself into the ground over and over again.  This deployment experience in particular is one I have NO control over, and trying to let go of the need to feel like I have all the answers is not at all easy.  So I've started small, trying to deal with the one thing I can control, the thoughts in my own head.  

Philippians 4:8 says " ⁸ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."  Thinking lovely thoughts isn't as easy as it sounds, especially for someone like me.  I sometimes feel like I am at war with my own insecurities, which makes dealing with Jar being in an actual war zone extra difficult.  Negative thinking can be like a disease, it can metastasize uncontrollably and snowball out of control if left unchecked.  But the cure is simple, and it resides in my own head and my own heart.