Thanks for your support, but...

We're coming up on Memorial Day, which leads to a heightened awareness, especially in a primarily military community such as this, of soldiers who have died or been injured in action, and those who are currently deployed overseas. This leads to people saying a variety of stupidly mean and/or stupid but kindly meant things. Usually, but not always, it's political. Frequently it's a simple "Thank your husband for serving." Or "Thank you both for your service." I kind of like the second one; it acknowledges, in a low-key way, that, yeah, I'm sacrificing things, too, in the name of the Army.

There's one sentence I hear a lot that I both love and hate: "Wow, you must be so proud of your soldier." I'm sure others hear it, too; spouses, parents, grandparents, siblings... whatever.

Obviously, I can't speak for everybody, but for me... Well, yeah. I kind of am proud of him. He's choosing to do something very difficult, yet very important. On some level, our soldiers over there, attempting to take a stand against intolerance, small-mindedness...they're doing some important work. Granted, I think we should have all our human-rights ducks in a row before we start pushing that off on other people, but it's a start, right?

So, yeah, I'm proud of him, but at the same time... At the same time, I'm kind of not. I'm kind of angry, in fact. Angry at him. Angry at myself.

We both knew what was coming when he decided to reenlist some years after 9/11. We knew there was no way he'd be able to avoid deploying multiple times; we knew there'd be a lot of times I'd be left at home holding down the fort, keeping things together for the kids & giving him something to come back to. We knew there'd be a lot of moving, a lot of friends coming and going through our lives, some to simple ETS/PCS moves, some to divorce, some -- sadly and irreparably -- to death.

We've had our share and our fill of all three in the past seven years. It has been a long, hard road, and in this instance, it does NOT get easier with time and experience. If anything, it has gotten harder; part of me cannot help but see that my husband has gotten older, he's slowly having health issues and his body is not holding up to the over-rigorous use the military puts on it. I am resentful that he's put me in this position, where I have to watch his body fall apart a little more each year, in ways that so many other soldiers' do, in response to the stressors they are put through even without the bullets flying and bombs exploding.

I admit I'm not great at statistics, but I do know that the more often he goes over, and the more dangerous the places he goes to, eventually his luck may run out. He may get killed; it's more likely he'll get injured or suffer debilitating PTSD. I am angry that I might be in the position of having to care for him, a man in the prime of his life, because he CHOSE a profession with an inherent risk or permanent damage. I am furious that he chose a career that murders marriages, putting stress on those bonds that sometimes even the strongest can't withstand. I am incensed when I consider that I may one day have to explain to my children that Daddy is never coming home, or that he is coming home but deeply, profoundly wounded physically and/or mentally.

I hate passionately the fact that simply living my life normally takes up so very much of my energy that it's hard to find enough for 'extras' like taking my kids to the beach. There is only one of me to go around, so my kids don't get nearly enough one-on-one time, and I don't share certain interests with them, like fishing, so they don't get that special bonding time. It's hard to do spur-of-the-moment when you don't have someone you can turn to and say, "Hey, DinoBoy is having a really hard time coping with his best friend moving away; he really needs some special time. Do you want to take him out, or do you think it would be better for me to do it while you watch the others?" Instead, you have to hope you can impress on the others that right now, you need them to amuse themselves and not be asking you questions so that you can spend the next hour and a half on the sofa with a rigidly curled up eight-year-old, trying to calm him down enough so that he can talk semi-coherently.

So, yeah, I'm not so proud sometimes. Fearful, angry, sad, and a lot of other 'negative' emotions, but not always proud.

On the other hand? I am very proud of my soldier. I could not keep going in the face of what he goes through. And I love him and know WHY he's doing it all, and THAT is something I can be proud of.

Happiness is...

(Yes, it really *is* that simple -- "Happiness is anyone and anything at all that's loved by you." Happiness from "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

I had a conversation about 6 weeks or so ago with a friend about happiness; specifically about what responsibility we have toward loved ones -- friends, spouses, family members -- and their happiness. One of the things we agreed on was that the individual is responsible for his or her own happiness, and no one else can make you happy.

Since then, I've been just allowing things to percolate around in my brain (ok, so sometimes I take a while percolating.) A few personal incidents have been making me question my own relationships and happiness, and I've been having... not exactly a crisis of faith, but... Well, the military lifestyle can take a huge toll on long-term relationships, just in general, and adding in multiple deployments, kids, and post-traumatic stress, it can make you question everything you think you know about yourself and your life.

So, while I don't disagree that I (or anyone else) has no responsibility for another's actual feeling happy, I do question how much of a responsibility we bear toward helping those we love find and experience those things that can make them happy. Also, how much are we willing to sacrifice of our immediate happiness? In other words, how much of my happiness is affected by my husband and kids being happy, as well? What is the compromise, and how can it be reached?

My current lifestyle as a military spouse and a Stay-at-home parent are a huge example of the compromises I've made in the interest of someone else's happiness. My husband and I met in the Washington, DC, area. He's 11 years older than I am, so he was fairly well established, while I was burned out from college and taking a year off to reevaluate my choices and major. Long story short, rather than going back to school, I found myself married and a mother. Things were good for a couple of years, but I was from a way small town in southwest Virginia, and the DC area ended up making me incredibly stressed out. I just couldn't take the people and the traffic. My husband saw that I was trying -- and failing -- to cope, and we decided that we'd move back to my hometown. We lived with my parents for far too many months, until he and I had both found and trained for new jobs, and found a house and a babysitter and all that fun stuff. And then I got pregnant again.

The problem with where we were is that there aren't a lot of jobs, and the ones that there are, are usually labor-intensive, involving many long hours, and occasionally dangerous conditions. Pay isn't great, and benefits are nearly non-existent. And after the appearance of Baby#2, we realized that my paycheck plus a bit was going to be completely swallowed by childcare. At that point we had to reevaluate the working situation -- our choices were to cut extras down to nothing and me stay home with the kids (which we could afford, with just barely enough left over for the occasional splurge) or for me to find a second job, which would mean that we'd need after-hours care for the kids (which would probably have been provided by my parents and sister) and that we'd never see each other because Hubby was working roughly 14 hour days, 6 days a week. All things considered, me staying home seemed like the best option. I loved being home with my kids, and when they got to be a bit too much for me, we were just a few miles down the road from my parents; I could just dump everyone in the car and run out to Mom's office or to their house for enough of a change of scenery to keep me sane.

But the hours and the lack of benefits were wearing on us. Years before, when he was fresh out of high school, Hubby did a stint in the Army, where he was able to drive a tank. He's always always been fascinated by tanks, but there's not exactly a lot of call for those skills in the civilian world. So after much talking and stressing, we finally decided that, yes, it would be hard, but his passion was in the military. So we started the long journey back to the military.

Being a military spouse is a totally different world. A lot of the military wives I've met (I haven't met many husbands because heavy armor units are exclusively male -- female soldiers are office support staff) are military brats themselves and knew what they were getting into. Others married their spouses at the beginning of their service and learned along with their soldiers. I was completely switching up my life, and I still feel like I'm behind the learning curve (not a comfortable place to be for the girl who messed up all the grading curves in school).

I don't regret choosing my husband's needs over my own wants (luckily we've been in places with enough of a small town feel for me, while being close enough to the kinds of things my husband is into to keep us both reasonably happy in downtime). On the other hand... Being in the military hasn't exactly guaranteed Hubby's happiness. Our first posting had him, not on tanks, but on a Stryker MGS. At our current posting, he was actually able to be on a tank, but had issues with some of his superiors, so it really is all about attitude and determination -- all the things he hated about the old unit were suddenly viewed through rose-colored glasses.

Lately, though, I've been missing my own family and friends (most of whom I've managed to stay in touch with via Twitter/Facebook) and a life-course that I plotted for myself. The ironic thing about this is that my life-course, as plotted by me, was already off-track by the time I met my husband, and I still haven't really figured out which track to get it back on. And, yeah, I've been thinking about all the things that aren't right in my marriage. And it's a lot of pretty heavy stuff. So I decided to look back at what was good, and think about whether or not we could get back there.

You know what? I think we can, but it's gonna take a lot of hard work from both of us. And the first, and hardest, part is gonna be just plain bringing it up. But if that's what I need to do to be happy? Yeah, it's not as hard as being NOT happy.

So, no, I can't make him happy. But having the power to help him find the way to happiness, and knowing that I have the ability to deny him that happiness? That's a HUGE thing. And I have a responsibility, in the spirit of the vows we made when we got married, to help him figure out what he needs. And if it's within my power to help him reach for those things, I have a responsibility to do that, too.

I am in control of my own happiness. I am choosing to share my happiness with my husband by helping him find his own. Our lives are so intertwined that it seems cold and sterile to imagine NOT being a part of his journey. Marriage has created a double helix of us, like a strand of DNA, and we are joined as we wind around and around a central axis. And when we lose the cohesiveness of our relationship, we damage the very fabric of ourselves. We may seem oddly suited (in truth, we are VERY oddly suited!) for each other, but I cannot take my happiness at the expense of his, any more than he can take his at the expense of mine, and still expect the relationship to survive. And if I feel we're slipping apart, I have a responsibility to bring that to our mutual attention, so we can decide how we can save it.

My happiness isn't dependent on his, but they're certainly linked.

(After all, most of my happiness can be found inside a good book, with a glass of tea and a cat on the side.)

sanctuary

It's funny how having just one room in the house that is free of things that stress you out can completely change your outlook. (I'm wishing now that I had before pictures, and I haven't yet taken the afters, but I may...and if I do, I'll come back and add them.)

I spent the last week cleaning my bedroom. I moved everything -- absolutely everything -- except 3 pieces of furniture that were Too Large out of the room, and into the living room. I wiped down walls. I cleaned windows. I wiped down furniture and flipped the mattress (we really need a new one, but I need to wait till Hubby is home; we must make sure it's one we both can sleep on). I tossed torn-beyond-repair things -- a bedskirt and a mattress pad -- and replaced others -- the curtains which match the comforter we HAD two years ago, but not the quilt we've had since. There are new curtains. They are not brown, they are a lovely, pale seaglass green. I steam cleaned the carpet. I dusted some things and washed others. I disposed of nearly a shelf-length of books (most of them my sad and shameful Diana Palmer collection, or part of it) and a garbage bag plus of clothes I have not worn in a long time, or have never worn, or have no intention of ever wearing again. I still have more that I haven't been able to bring myself to get rid of yet, but hopefully soon...

I scrutinized very carefully everything that came back into that room. I have organized and reorganized and the only things left that I don't absolutely believe belong in there are a basket of books that I need to either finally read, or reread and decide whether or not I want to keep them, and an orange-crate of things that really belong in a different room. Oh, and some laundry baskets. Once I get around to getting myself a new hamper, the laundry baskets shall be stored elsewhere. Perhaps the laundry room, when they're not in use.

I think I might even have room in there for a dainty, slim little slipper chair -- if I could find one I love! I'd like to be able to remove the desk-style sewing machine, but it was my great-grandmother's and I'm not ready to give it up, nor do I, at this moment, have anywhere else to put it. And I could use a new dresser; the one Hubby and I are sharing is only big enough for both of us when he's gone and I can pack away half of his clothes. Not really an ideal solution, I think you can agree.

I don't even have a clock in the room; Hubby's is too bright and keeps me awake at night, so I removed it, and mine is in the little hallway that passes as the "sink" portion of our bathroom, where I can't see it from the bed and have to actually get out of bed to walk to and turn off in the morning (which keeps me from hitting snooze more than once. Or twice if it's been a particularly bad night.) All this leaves the room feeling like a giant, full-body hug to myself. I can go in there, shut the cats and dogs and kids out, and just be quiet and be myself. I may even have enough room by the foot of the bed to set up my computer, kick the dog bed out of the way, and do yoga. It's cool and calm and softly-lit, and non-stressful. I just have to remember to dust to keep it that way.

Now all I have to do is that little sliver of a bathroom, and maybe the walk-in closet but there's no rush on that, and it'll be all done. The bathroom should only take a couple of hours; the closet can wait indefinitely. Next up will be probably the kitchen. Or the dining room. Or whatever. Same M.O. -- empty of everything possible, clean from the ceiling down, replace things slowly. Stuff I want to keep for the kids or a different season or whatever can be packed away. Stuff I don't want but is in good shape can go to Goodwill. Stuff that is beyond help can be tossed. Slowly, slowly, I think I can get my house cleaned out.

Happy springtime!