Gone

Superman left early this morning for a month-long military training. And I'm totally inconsolable.

A month in military family standard time is equivalent to a day or even less in civilian time. A walk in the park.

But for some reason, this time I've been feeling it harder.  (How did I do this for a six month period last time? Or even a year in a combat zone? What has happened to me?!)

Maybe it's because we've gotten used to seeing each other around (somewhat). Or maybe it's because of baby-related hormones. Or maybe it's that I've been feeling a sense of completeness lately with our little growing family...

I have a new found respect for women who go through an entire pregnancy, even babyhood, all while their husbands are deployed. You are all better women than I. Or perhaps you have more balanced progesterone levels...

The worst is that I've been feeling this way for weeks before today. Anxious, nervous, worried, fearful anticipation.

Oh military, you have a sneaky way of just knowing when things are going really good. That's when you figure it's best to throw a wrench in things. And you never forget to throw in that added punch of insomnia, just to put it all even a little more off balance.

As much as I'd love to just sleep away the days, I can't. I can't make us Army wives look weak...

That and seriously, I have some major work deadlines coming up that I can't just wallow away into MIA-hood.

But for the record, it never gets easier -- as much as I'd like to think and say it does.

One month. Here goes.

Sleepless in the Apple

I must have tucked away a few experiences from Superman's deployments that only now are starting to resurface.

Insomnia.

Looking back I always think, how did I ever endure? I think, could I ever do it again?

(Deployment powers-that-be, that was a rhetorical question, okay!? thanks.)

I think deployments nowadays are so much easier -- soldiers have social media, skype, gchat... whatever. And they always seem to be so available! We didn't have that. Superman had work to do. I had work to do. And somehow I dug up the foresight in an at least twice a week phone call to know that it would all work out.

This time it's different. It's been a while since Superman's deployment, but a part of me is beginning to think that Superman's mini-deployment (a.k.a. the Academy) is way more difficult. No communication allowed during the week. I got more phone calls while Superman was in IRQ than within a few hundred mile radius. So we don't talk.

But sleep.

Sleep. That's what I miss the most this week. That experience of deployment pseudo-sleep is coming back to me now.

My mind is always racing a million miles a minute with endless thoughts, task lists, anxieties...

So what's an Appleite to do when her thoughts won't let her rest her head, and the double digits on the clock that signal bed time have transformed into single digits that signal a new day?

Get out. Literally. Get out of the apartment and go to the wonderful Greek diner a few blocks up. One of the hundreds -- no, thousands -- of places in the city that are open 24 hours. And not just open. But occupied. Full of sleepless-in-the-Apple people who are on a date with themselves. The diner is more than just a place for a midnight snack. It's a cult of people who have no idea who the heck Superman is, but they get why I'm there. Because they have the same symptoms.

The best place to have insomnia is in the city that never sleeps.

Change

I have an incredible fear of change.

I know it may not seem like it since I'm continually changing states, changing hairstyles, and heck, I'm even married to the military, which brings about change faster than we can blink sometimes!

But every so often I stop to think about the changes that are happening all around me that I can't control and I experience a terrible bout of anxiety - even if they're happy changes.

Trigger for this conversation: My cousin just had a baby. While I'm totally ecstatic that my family is growing, I think about how often we used to see each other (all the time!).  And how we made our first music video together. And then I think about the last time I saw her -- 2 years ago. And how much is changing and much I'm missing. I think about how fast life is passing by and how important it is to keep ties with family and friends.

My family is changing, my friends are changing, and all I can think about is how much I'm trying to keep track of it all and understand that we're not going to stay young forever. But I also think about how much I'm trying to stay involved in all this change, but it's tough to keep up!

I know it's just unreasonable to think that everyone and everything won't change, and we can all just be the "way we were." But I haven't been able to shake the fear the change. I've been feeling this urge lately to just travel across the country to visit all of my family and friends that are somewhere else. I want to keep us all together!

Do you have a fear of change? How do you quell your fear?

Alone

Some "together" days I feel more alone than "TDY" days. Even though Superman is not deployed, I'm beginning to feel that he was more present in my life while he was gone for training or on a deployment, than he is when he is here.

I find myself pretty much on my own most of the time. Our time together is more about checklists and tiptoeing around eachother. And every conversation is about being somewhere other than here -- a new job somewhere else, an event that is happening somewhere else.

Earlier in my career, I moved a lot and had crazy rotating shifts that left me exhausted and a few times turned to medical emergencies. After that, I developed maladjustment anxiety and it took me a few years to get myself rooted again and reassure myself that the rug isn't going to be swept up from under me.

Part of that anxiety is coming back since I'm in a place where Superman is always drumming up to leave. It's hard to find calm when there's a storm of hypotheticals raging.

But at the beginning and end of each day, I have to remind myself that whatever is raging in the mind of the other half... when Superman's always looking to get out of town and escape from somewhere other with us...

I am here. now. Present at this moment. Grounded in my work and life and school. That I don't have to worry about instability because things are stable here. My thoughts and my actions are one. There is no where else I would rather be than taking in this second, now.

I don't have to worry about skipping town, or where I'm going to live, which bed I'll lay in or couch I'll plop on at the end of the day, or what's going to happen from one day to the next. I'm not thinking about any other job or life than what I have here, now.

That's freedom to me, now. And Manhattan is home to me, now.

And when Superman gets the itch to go, I let him go. After all, you can't make someone be where he doesn't want to be.

Heard this song and it totally got my wheels turning last night...

That's What He Said

In some ways, I feel like our deployment is coming to an end. Before it ever really started. So let's call it, seperation.

Narrowing down to the end of every period of seperation brings on mixed feelings of anxiety, excitement, stress, fear, happiness... you name it. It's inevitable that I will feel every emotion in the book in these remaining two weeks before Superman comes home.

I never felt anything extraordinary in the thick of our seperations. The middle of a seperation is always well past that jarring feeling of everything to nothing. And in the middle there's no end in sight. So I think as Army wives, we just put the feelings away and just focus on every day. But when the end is near, that's when everything locked away pushes itself out.

But of all the emotions that spouses will endure seperately as they near the end (perhaps one of us might feel excitement, while the other will feel nervous), there's one emotion that ALL spouses will always both feel together.

Exhaustion. 

We are exhausted. In italics.

Exhausted from being in "go" mode ever since we can remember. Exhausted from not finding a "together" place and calling it home. Exhausted from spending more married days apart than together. Exhausted that we talk about friends or coworkers that, until now, our spouse has never met. Exhausted from feeling that any moment will just turn our life upside down again, maybe keep us apart longer. I feel like we're on the last few rotations on the rat wheel, before we can finally hop off and just take a breath.

Superman and I are inherently active people. For the life of me I can't sit through a whole movie. I'm convinced Superman's never had a lazy Sunday in his whole life. But I never really realized it during our time apart how hard we've been working ourselves, and our relationship, and our marriage.

Now I think it's time to force ourselves to let things get easy for a while.

And shoot, it took me 10 grafs to say what Superman said to me in one, complete sentence that resonated so true, that it is ever more appropriate now than just saying I-love-you.

"I want to get boring with you."

Contingency

It is three weeks before Superman was scheduled to deploy.

Was.

Superman is no longer deploying.

One of Superman’s orders did not go through and we found out about this just yesterday.  The Army has sent us on ups, downs and all arounds, but nothing as jolting as this.

We have planned for everything. We sold the bike, rented the house, changed our residency, became beneficiaries, lived apart, quit jobs, and took jobs.

Right now, I don’t know how I feel. In theory I should feel happy. This means that a year from now is just one month away – our long-awaited togetherness ever after. I don’t believe it. No really, I don’t.  I know I definitely have a familiar feeling of anxiety coupled with anticipation and excitement – the exact feeling I felt a few weeks before Superman returned from his first deployment.  

In fact, all I really remember from Superman’s initial phone call was this: “If any couple has been through everything, it’s us. So I have no doubt we’ll get through this. Just like we’ve gotten through everything else.”

For the first time, Superman may be around for my birthday. For the first time, Superman may be around for his own birthday. Superman may see me accept my first journalism award. We may not even have to eat the rest of our wedding cake a few months short of our first anniversary. We may be able to spend our first anniversary together. For our first time. 

But I also have an overwhelming feeling of disappointment. No one was more prepared to handle this year better than we were. Deployment is a state of mind a spouse eases into. It took us two years to settle into this deployment. And it’s not a switch we can turn on and off. Yesterday, today, perhaps even tomorrow, we are in deployment. We projected the future together so far ahead that 2011 seemed like an independent individual endeavor. Now we know it won’t be. 

More than anything, I thought of Superman’s deployment as a job. And in some ways, this feels like getting laid off.  I know there are so many options ahead for us, but I fear that what I should be fearing about a year from now – having to leave the apple, leave my career, leave my life, leave my writing program, leave my friends, give up, give up, give up when I have just taken off the ground – is something I fear now. Even though I know there's more keeping us in the apple than anywhere else. I also fear that even though there’s no deployment, it may not mean that we will actually be together. There has always been some force that, for more than 5 years strong, has kept us apart. So it can’t be this easy. I’m so jaded.

The truth is Superman and I have never been together. Never been married. But we have been apart. We have been deployed. So now, for the first time, we are entering the unknown.

And I’m learning that what’s scarier than enduring a deployment is not enduring one. And not knowing what the future -- which is now thought of as one month from now -- holds for us.

Goodbyes

This morning when Superman left our place, I knew he wouldn't be back for a long time.

This is it.

Three weeks of training, a few days to say hi and bye again, and then D-Day.

I know you're thinking that it's been a long time coming. But between all the must-do's before the big day that has consumed us over the past few months, it never set in for us. But last night, laying in bed, it hit me -- a mix of happy's and sad's.

Sad for all of the obvious reasons. But sad primarily that it'll be a whole year of growing separately.

Happy that we're in the waiting period homestretch. Happy that the faster he leaves, the faster he comes home. Happy that in one year coming home will finally mean togetherness ever after!

But for now, all I wanna do is sneak to another part of town and dunk my head in a huge bowl of hot fudge sundae, followed by a defeated lactose-induced year-long nap.

Because really, what respectful Manhattanite would commit such an atrocity in their own neck of the 'hood?

Riding in Style

Being a frequent bus rider, I've learned that there are just as many people trying to leave the apple as there are trying to get in. Oftentimes that leaves me waiting in long lines for shady buses that may or may not show. And once I'm in, it's inevitable I'll be stuck on the stuffy bus hours longer than the listed 4 hours.

I've travelled my whole life, but nothing gets to me more than the bus rides that need to be taken if Superman and I are ever going to see each other.  Maybe I don't hate the bus. Maybe I just hate everything the bus stands for. No wait, I also hate the bus.

I usually experience a mini anxiety attack minutes before getting on the bus to or away from Superman. And Superman knows this. So to ease my anxiety, he surprised me by getting me a ticket on the Limo Liner -- an ultra swanky "bus" that's more like a private first class ride. Instead of having to limit myself to staring out of the window for 4+ hours, I could spread out! I had my own personal workspace, including a desk, leather reclining chairs, personal flat screen TV, and snacks and drinks served!

These phone pics don't do it justice!

And when I wrapped up my work, put my feet up and looked out the window I thought about how grateful I am for everything in my life. More than anything right now, I'm grateful for a man who always works hard to support my dream and make me happy. Nothing I do for him can compare.

While a better ride won't replace actually being with Superman, I think it's a sign that we're just doing the best that we can with what we've been given. God is great.

Apple & Army

Today, Superman and I have been married 3 months. But we don't live together. Yet.  

Blame it on the military. Well, partially... because even though I'm an Army wife, I don't quite live that cliche army life.

There are many misconceptions about Army wives. Of course, stereotypes come from some truth, but my life isn't about fitting into that mold. 

I don't live on a base. I don't live off of my husband's salary. We're both "highly" educated [one of us higher than the other ;) ] I've got my own career. And come March, while Superman is deployed to AFG for a year, I'll be livin in the big apple chasin a hard-worked-for dream.

In the 5 years that we've known each other, we've spent less than a year in the same location. We have two "homes" that we built together, but we still don't live together full-time.  Instead, we live our life through phones, letters, and emails. Blame that on the training, past year-long deployment, and the one that's on the way.

And while Superman's been away a lot, I feel an overwhelming motivation to move forward in my life and my career, instead of waiting empty-handed "at home." I feel an overwhelming responsibility to find personal success. So that's taken me to many different places across the country while he's been gone. You can say that while he's TDY, I've been TDY too. And what's great is that for now, our relatioship dynamic works for that kind of life. I've always got to have my hand in something. And Superman is so supportive of "doin my own thang."   

Many days we really hate it, and we know we can only live that way for so long. We vowed our life will change when he returns from this deployment.Wherever in the world we end up, we will be there together. Full-time.

For now, we'll spend these final three months taking advantage of every chance we get together, before we spend our year apart.

Until we can finally pull ourselves together under one roof, this is our story.