11 March 2009

Change is gonna do me good.

So, being here, at home in the upper Midwest, working and going on with life like nothing has changed in the last year and a half is getting tedious. Maybe it has something to do with knowing that I am leaving in 10 months. Maybe I am just ready to not be in transition (Ha! *Snort* Who am I kidding?) Maybe I am just ready to get on with the life that is waiting for me, for us back at Fort X.

I am tired of my job. Not that it isn't a great one and not that some of the folks I work with aren't amazing, because it is and they are. I am just tired of being here. I am tired of cleaning a house I know I won’t be in a year from now. I am tired of pretending to everyone who knows me that once Swiss comes back I won’t be leaving. (Heck, my bosses have actually told me I can’t leave and I've had to lie my ass off so far. Awesome.) I am tired of going through the motions of the life Swiss and I used to have. God, I sound so melodramatic... get a grip girl!

I think I am just really ready for the changes that await us. And perhaps some of this has to do with how this deployment is playing out. Not on Swiss’s end, on mine. I dealt with all of the pre-deployment anxiety, the anticipatory grief, the crying jags and the practically numbing fear when we first learned of it in May. (I blogged about that super fun day too if you care to read.) I didn't really know what to expect to feel like when he actually left. I didn't know how well I would handle it (I had high hopes but you never know…). Surprisingly, I don’t feel even remotely like I did last summer. I am okay, still a bit scared and worried, but dealing with all of this just fine, thank you very much.

See, it was the fear of how I would cope, how I would handle this is why I decided to come back here to our home and not move to Fort X for the duration of the deployment. This way I would be near friends, near family, keeping as much the same as I could… like our house and my job. But now I just feel out of place. I know none of our/my life here is permanent like I thought it might be. Not my job, my house, or my surroundings. It has been kind of liberating to know that I don’t NEED any of this. Just Swiss and my family (and dear Val who I can’t bear the thought of leaving). But this lag time between the now and the future is awkward at best.

There is no solution. This is just me venting. The end.

4 comments:

Butterfly Wife said...

When my Jack Bauer was getting ready to deploy, he moved 1500 miles away to be with the unit for 9 months. I could have moved with him. But we decided against it for similar reasons. I would have had to quit my job, leave my friends and all that was familiar to go live in a new place where I didn't know any one or have those comforts you get used to. For a long time, I knew that we'd be moving on after he came back. And it was hard at first to pretend like we'd be staying there forever. It got easier over time. The thing I kept telling myself was that things can always change. So while we were planning one thing, I had to keep what I had intact so in case Plan A fell through.

Good luck!

Jennifer said...

I lived our last year in OK that way. Jon was deployed for half of it, the stupid AF made us move from one house on base to another (privatization is the dumbest thing EVER), most of my best friends had already moved away and I just mentally checked out of the place.

Just waited for the inevitable change that was soon to come...

Take care, you.

Bette said...

Maybe (hopefully) it will be different for you, since Fort X could be your final duty station, but I'm finding that with every move, I'm a little less invested in where I am, because I know it's temporary. Every place feels a little out of place. As you've already figured out, it's what's inside that makes you comfortable or not. So you'll be fine wherever you land.

Kanani said...

After twenty six years of marriage, hubby lives at Fort X, and I live across the country.

I'm actually enjoying myself. My clothes and shoes are everywhere, the bathroom is clean (haha), the kids have their friends, the animals aren't discombobulated and we talk on the phone a few times a day. It's temporary until something else works out. But for now, I'm happy staying here in our house near our friends, and have been able to ride out this recession by finding a "pert fab job."