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So Your Husband is Going on Vacation?
So your husband is going on vacation… destination Iraq (or other extremely nice places in the Middle East). Did you see the brochure he brought home? The list of vacation essentials that he needs to pack? This looks like fun!
It might seem strange to think of a deployment this way, but some women act as if their significant other is off on an extended vacation when they are deployed. Why is this? This jealousy that we feel while they are gone is real, but so misplaced. Why do we feel that we, as the person “holding down the Fort”, have it much worse than the deployed family member? Maybe it’s because we have been left behind. We are left with all of the responsibility to run a household on our own for a very long time. We get tired of doing everything: from handling all of the finances to playing the “single Mom” role, from taking out the trash – never used to be our “job” – to maintaining cars, from fixing leaky faucets to repairing each and every appliance that we secretly think knows he is gone. What is he doing? Is it really like being on vacation? Does he sleep in? Are meals served as if in a 5 star hotel? Does he get to take a long nice bath without 3 kiddos under the age of 5 running in and out the room? I think not. So how do we deal with the Green Monster that comes and visits us each time our loved one deploys? First we must educate ourselves on what a deployment really is. It is a job that they will be doing 24/7 for the next several months. We need to ask questions of our spouse before they leave. If we can know where they are going and what they will be doing, without violating OPSEC, we are then armed with lots of information to continue our research on what a deployment really is.
Knowledge is power and to gain this knowledge we must do some research. When my husband left for his first deployment I was starved for information. I wanted to know everything! So I sat myself down at the computer and searched the Internet high and low. I found lots of information. I found out what the weather was like, pictures of the areas he would be “visiting”, and even personal “blogs” from military members who had been there before. I really think that I knew more about his “vacation destination” then he did! I printed these things out. I made a wall – a deployment wall in my office. Here I posted pictures of what it looked like where he was “living”. I have pictures of the “sleeping area”, pictures of the “mess hall”, and pictures of the phone center he would use. Any picture associated with where he was hung on this wall. I printed out maps and put a push pin on the areas where he was. I have pictures of what it looks like when there is a mail drop. None of these pictures are of my husband and none of them are of anyone from the unit he went over with. They are pictures from the people who had been there before, pictures of people I have never met and never will. But I used these pictures to remind me what it really is like for my husband. He is not sleeping in a bed like me. He only showers when he can. Never has time to go to lunch with friends or watch his favorite TV program. He can’t just pick up the phone to chat with anyone when he feels lonely or scared. I looked at this wall everyday to remind me. He is not on vacation! He is in a war zone! These pictures remind me how easy I have it. They remind me that he will be wearing cammies for 7 months straight. He will be carrying equipment and weapons everywhere he walks. They remind me that he will stand in a line for hours just to call me for 5 minutes. They remind me that he has no privacy. His “rack” is located with several others all standing in a row two bunks high, most college dorm rooms have more privacy then where my husband sleeps. Oh, and that is only when he is there. For most of the time he spent on his vacation his bed was a sleeping bag in a Humvee or in the sand. I feel that I have conquered that Green Monster: I have my wall! It grounds me and I can continue to support my husband and not feel like I have been given the raw end of the “deal”. And when times are tough and that Monster peeks his head in – well I just call a girly friend and off we go to get ice cream… bet they don’t have ice cream in the desert. See I have it good!
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