Ok, so, I've been thinking about something for a little while now. Most of you (heh, who am I kidding? What *most*? There are 5 followers to this blog & one of them is ME! Anyhoo...) know that my hubby is active duty Army, and he's deploying soon to...y'know what? I'm not really sure how much I'm allowed to say, so. We've done Iraq, and we're OUT of Iraq, so it's not there.
Anyway, my point is. The last week or so has been full of FRG (that's Family Readiness Group, for those of you who don't know; it's supposed to be an organization of spouses and family members of deployed soldiers within their battalions/companies/whatever to provide support/info/resources) meetings and informational meetings and whatnot, gearing up for the guys going to NTC (National Training Center) in California for a month. They'll be home for roughly 3 weeks afterward before shipping out for a 9-month deployment.
Almost a week ago, the big thing was the Pre-Deployment Fair, where all the various resource organizations on-post gathered to provide brochures, etc., to soldiers and spouses. 24 tables of tons of pieces of paper. Some of it was info that I already had, and had used. Some of it, I knew about but had never had occasion to use. There were a number of people who were "new" -- had never really done one of these before, didn't know about the resources, whatever. The problem is, they started late & had to finish kind of early, and they wanted everybody to visit everywhere, so there was sort of a bingo-sheet & we were supposed to get every little square for every table marked. This just seemed rushed and stressful to me, especially for me not needing a lot of the info, and, I imagine, for those who DID need it but felt like they had to hurry through so that everyone else could have their turn.
What I was particularly struck by was the number of soldiers who were there unaccompanied. Granted, some of them probably have spouses who were unable to attend for some very good reasons, but I wondered how many of them had SOs who didn't feel welcome or couldn't come for some less good reasons. It's one thing to not show up because you can't get the time off from work, or because you only have 1 vehicle and your spouse couldn't get home in time to pick you up and bring you back. It's something else entirely if you can't get on post because you don't have the proper ID and validation stickers on your vehicle because they're not available to you because you HAVE no marital status allowed on a federal level. It's something else if you can't come because, even though DADT has been repealed, maybe your guy isn't ready to tell the people he works with about you.
That strikes me as unbearably sad, that there might be people living just a few miles from me, in need of some of the services and support that are available to me, that I'm able to choose whether or not to make use of. Since FRG meetings always take place on post, and you have to be either a soldier, a spouse, or a veteran/spouse with post privileges to even really GET on post, that pretty much lets out a whole segment of potential friends/fellow sufferers from even knowing the people who would be able to say, "Hey, I absolutely get what you're going through. I'm here if you need to talk to someone about it." I don't know how I'd cope without those few military spouses I've managed to forge a real friendship with; I really wish I knew how to reach out to the nontraditional families and say "I'm here if you need me."
That's a story I'd love to see -- how someone deals with a deployment when he's left without those resources. Maybe his guy was in the middle of a deployment when DADT was completely repealed, and now he's still not ready to come out. Maybe the one left at home is kind of feeling unsure about their relationship; after all, if he was really important, wouldn't his soldier want to tell *someone* about them, now that he can? How isolating would it be to know that you're entitled to some of this stuff, at least, but not be able to take advantage of it because to ask for it would be to out the one you love without his permission? What if *no one* knows for sure about your relationship; what if all your mutual friends have been led to believe that you're just roommates? (Yeah, sure, at least someone has guessed, but they know as well as you do that they can't just out someone like that.)
And what happens when he comes home...?
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