Surviving A Military Deployment
I am sitting in my living room, in our 3rd-floor stairwell apartment in Schweinfurt, Germany. We just got back from the park, and my two-year-old is finally asleep. I am nursing my baby to sleep and will put him down in a bit.
I plan to take a well-needed bubble bath once I do. It’s been a day. It’s been a week. It’s been a rough deployment.
And we still have so much more time to go…
Way too many days…way too long. And while every day is a day closer, the time ahead is just…well I am not sure how I am going to do this.
As I lay my baby down, I have no idea that his Dad won’t see him again until he is almost one. Or that after he comes home, it will be hard for him to bond. I have no idea that the deployment we thought would end in the summer would get extended again, and then again, and that he wouldn’t be home until right before Thanksgiving.
I leave the room and run the bath. I will probably read for a bit as I always do but I can’t stop thinking about things.
What if my husband never comes back?
What if he does and he isn’t the same?
What if I have way too hard of a time getting through this that the deployment breaks me forever?
It’s so hard not to worry about these things. They happen. They have happened to my friends.
It’s so hard to know how to have faith all will be okay when you know it might not be.
Deployments are so hard…and it’s okay to feel like you can’t go one more day.
It’s been 11 years since that deployment. Time has moved on. My boys have gotten older. We have been through more deployments.
They never get any easier. But you do learn how to cope.
I still hate the thought of being away from my husband, even though we make it through each and every time.
And although I would like to think that I could rock any future deployment we might go through, I also know that they could break me, just like they have done in the past.
If you are going through a deployment, know you are not alone. I have been there. Others have been there.
If you are about to start a deployment, know it is okay to be scared, that being worried about your spouse and what the deployment will be like is normal.
Know that you will grow as a person during the deployment. You will find ways to cope. You will deepen your friendships with others. You will figure out how to get to that finish line.
As military spouses, we do what we have to do because of who we love and the career our spouse has picked. But that doesn’t mean everything is easy or that we will never have a bad day. It just means we can find the strength to make it through…whatever comes our way.
If you are a military spouse looking for support, please take the time to check out my deployment blog posts here on Soldier’s Wife, Crazy Life. I have many posts on deployments based on my own experiences as a military spouse.
Remember, you are not alone, there are people who want to help you through this, and people who can stand by you as you do. You got this military spouse, you do <3
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[…] know for myself, when I was feeling sad during a deployment, I would try to picture homecoming and remind myself that the end of the deployment would come and […]