I still have my "panic" moments, though. For example, Jar informed me one day that he would be going on a mission soon, and I about had a nervous breakdown trying to make sure we got to Skype before he left. Once we were finally able to Skype, all I could say was "well, why are YOU going on this mission, why couldn't they send someone else?" And as soon as we hung up I felt like the world's biggest turd. The good news? I don't think I cried. But I would have much rather cried than felt like the douche that I did after that conversation!
And, I still do cry, about anything it seems. I cry when I see Hallmark commercials. When I see anything related to any type of soldier homecoming. I was actually visiting with a new friend over the weekend, whose husband is also deployed, and embarassed myself with a sporadic weeping moment. She had just found out that her husband might be losing internet service and that day might be the last time they'd get to Skype. Once they had finished talking, she was completely ok, and I was sitting there about to boohoo imagining how I'd feel if I found out the same news about Jar.
I have said more than once to Jar that I think this deployment is making me bipolar. Or possibly I was bipolar the entire time but was just able to hide it better! In reality, I'm dealing with things that I have been postponing for a long time. It's not always pretty, and that's ok. And things are starting to stabilize, the roller coaster ride I've been on has downgraded from being on "The Beast" to the Tilt-a-Whirl.
In my infinite dork-ness, I was thinking one day about the ups and downs of a deployment, and I think I've come up with a good visual representation of my mood so far. So have any of you heard of a damped oscillator? Well, if you haven't, don't worry, you're completely normal, and I'm getting ready to tell ya about them.
Imagine a pendulum on a grandfather clock. Well, a broken grandfather clock that isn't currently ticking. Imagine if you grabbed the bottom of the pendulum, pulled it as far as it would go to one side, and let it swing. When you first let it go, it's going to swing to the other side almost as high as you had pulled it back in the first place, but as time goes on and it swings back and forth a few times, it will swing up less and less, until it finally stops.
Somewhere in history, one of my fellow dorks determined that you could graph exactly how far that pendulum would swing each time, and exactly how long it would take it to stop (that is, if you theoretically knew all the external forces being applied to the pendulum i.e. gravity, drag from the air, and you knew the starting height of the pendulum before you let it go). This graph also describes my mood over the last few months.
If you didn't quite grasp this impromptu physics lesson, then don't fret. All I was trying to say is that, as time goes on (in the case of this graph, towards the little t), my mood swings have dropped off (the red line going back and forth). The unfortunate thing is, even though I "know" all of the external forces being applied to me, I have no idea how I will react to them. I'm working to try and understand that, and like I've mentioned before, give up my need to feel I am in control. As I work towards that, I can handle a few crazy tears here and there! :)
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