Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Schizophrenia: a side effect of deployment

I began working on an entry about employment and my current status, but midway through that entry a more pressing issue arose that has been at the forefront of my thoughts for some time now: the many faces of military separation. Pardon the super long entry, but I have a lot to say on this matter.

Ryan has been gone now for 12 full days and, after the initial transition period passed, I came into the habit of making daily observations about how very different life is without him around. Now, it doesn’t really take a genius to realize that life would be vastly different without the presence of a person who has become your lifeline. Also, it’s not hard to believe that life is a completely different experience when you live as a single person instead of a couple, or even as a set of roommates. What was not obvious to me, though, until recently, is that in order for life to remain livable, I have had to change. In essence, I have been forced to become a different person entirely. This might be easy to understand, but for me, it was a harsh reality. I like who I am with Ryan; I actually feel like the best version of myself when we are together. Allow me to explain.

When Ryan and I first moved in together, it felt really easy. I think most couples go through a reasonable transition period, where each person has to not only experience the other’s daily habits and hidden personal secrets, but become accustomed to them and adapt to them as well. Over the course of time, no matter how much irritation and disgust arises, the two of you learn how to compromise and blend together, altering your lives to happily cohere. Granted, there were a few minor quirks that I had to adjust to, but ultimately, from my perspective, it was a seamless union. I love to cook, he loves to eat, we both enjoy spending an entire day watching tv on the couch, and sometimes we make bad food decisions but have an unspoken agreement to own them and not judge. We don’t feel forced to spend all of our time together, we have just always chosen to do so because we have more fun together than we could imagine having apart. I’ve learned so much about myself being with him and have truly become more comfortable in my own skin as we’ve grown as a couple.

Now, the old me would scoff at this. I’ve always been an independent woman, especially since I broke off my last engagement, hell bent to allow anyone to inhibit my need to stand alone at times. But, what I’ve realized, is that you can be an independent person and still need another person to help define you. The trick is to consciously participate in this definition; look at it as growth instead of inhibition; ensure that the definition of your character is being aided by the other person, and not controlled or misdirected. This is definitely the case with Ryan and me. I’m not afraid to admit that he has been behind a lot of my positive changes, pushing my growth and encouraging my development as an individual. I feel truly blessed to have someone with whom I can not only share myself so completely but who I can also trust to challenge me when I start to get lazy. The disappointing part of this reality is that it’s addictive and, when taken away, leaves the individual (that’s me) unsure of how to proceed. This brings me to the many faces of separation.

In the weeks leading up to this first stretch of separation, I was doing really well. The other wives actually commented on how well I was handling the idea of our first deployment. “Wow, Heather, we are so relieved you are taking this so well. It’s important to be as positive as possible, especially to help Ryan feel like you will be ok when he leaves.” Well, I have to admit, I was conscious of my positivity. My opinion was, “hey, he’s leaving no matter what. Who does it help to sulk and wait for it – we should enjoy the moments now and I can be sad later.” I call this Face 1: The Strong Face. Well, as the days became numbered and it was mere hours before he was to leave, I’d be lying if I said my positive face didn’t start turning downward. There were moments, unexpectedly, when I would have to leave the room because I would burst into tears. It was sort of like spontaneous combustion, brought on by the most random thing. I tried to not let Ryan see any of this, and was pretty successful, because I didn’t want him to worry about this separation any more than I knew he already was. The morning he left, though, was messy. This was the next face of separation, Face 2: the sad face, if you will. I was distraught, I cried endlessly (well, for a few hours, at least) and mourned his leaving as if I had nothing left to live for. Now, like I said, this only lasted a little while. I had to, after all, go to work that day. Bring on face #3, the diversionary face. On the way to work, I was still battling Face #2, especially because I was bombarded with a slew of Tim & Faith songs and other musical nonsense meant to divert my emotions. Later that same day, though, I found myself at work, immersed in the projects of the day. Face 2 & 3 really battled it out there for a day or two, but ultimately, Face 3 won. I developed a routine, I spent as many hours at work as possible, busied myself when I walked through the front door of my house, and tried to fall asleep right as I hung up the phone with Ryan. Here’s where the observations begin…

It didn’t take long for me to realize how I was trying to deal with this separation. Avoidance was key. I tried to detach myself from the situation by pretending like Ryan would be home that night for dinner. Then, when dinner time came, I’d distract myself in some other way. I immediately thought to myself, “well, this can’t be healthy. Since when is denial the best course of action?” But, I took it into consideration and really thought about it for the next day or two. Wasn’t it necessary, though? If I sat around, thinking actively about Ryan as much as I wanted to, I’d be a mess! I’d be a sobbing, sad, pathetic pool of unproductive drool and phlegm. Who needs that? But, I also couldn’t go about my life as usual. My usual day revolved around Ryan coming home. Yes, I went to the gym, cleaned up around the house, ran errands, etc. All of these tasks, though, were directly connected to the time Ryan would be home and were done in the hopes of having all responsibilities completed before he came home to me. I wanted to spend all of the time he was home with him, doing whatever we wanted, not bogged down by other things. Also, dinner was a large part of this process. I usually spent a better portion of my day thinking about what I’d make for him that night, what was something new we hadn’t tried, what groceries I’d need to get it done, etc. This all sounds hopelessly pre-women’s revolution, but don’t judge me – I spent 7 months unemployed and needed something to fill my time. I decided my husband was a worthy candidate and stand by that. At any rate, when he was gone, so was all of this. So, I couldn’t think about him and I couldn’t continue with my usual routine, what was I supposed to do? Face 3! The diversion.

I didn’t realize it at first, but I started getting to the point that the diversion was taking over so much that sometimes when Ryan would call, I would actually feel anxious to get off the phone to get back to what I was doing. In the moment, I felt validated, but the second I hung up the phone I said out loud to myself, “What the hell was that? Did you just get annoyed by talking to your husband. Check yourself or wreck yourself.” I was shocked. The next day, I was brought to face this problem in a different light. I received a distressed phone call (from someone I will not identify) from a friend who was experiencing her own separation from her husband. She and her husband have been apart a few weeks now and were looking at many more weeks apart for various reasons. They had become irritable with one another and had been spending a lot of time bickering and finger pointing. She was knee deep in Face 3 and her husband couldn’t understand why she never had time for him. It really boiled down to this, I think, as the ultimate source of their frustrations. He was frustrated to be left behind with her too busy to talk, and she was frustrated that he couldn’t understand her need to stay busy and involved in her routine. They were both suffering from the same thing – missing each other and struggling with dealing with it in their own ways. She was scared, though, that when they finally came back together that they’d find they had grown apart so much that they weren’t in love like they used to be. I told her she was crazy to think this way and if you go into a situation with thoughts like this, you were signing your own ending. The wives are right about one thing: you do need to remain as positive as possible, which is sometimes the hardest thing to accomplish.

So, after I told Ryan this story about my friend and we proceeded to have a long philosophical conversation about it, I started to realize how much I’d had to change my daily routine and my outlook just to make it through the time. Enter Face 4: the face of Rationalization (I’m still working on the name for this one). I was secretly nervous that I might change so much that I’d never be able to find my way back to where he and I were when he left. I also knew that I needed this alternate reality to distance myself from the situation. I spoke to another friend in the midst of her own separation, and she verified many of these things for me. She has already been through a deployment and told me the same thing I had felt before – sometimes she told her guy not to call for several days because talking to him brought her out of her diversionary face. It made Face 2 come back and derail the whole coping process. This made sense, but do I really want to be in that position? In the event that the unthinkable happens, do I want to know that I didn’t talk to my husband because I couldn’t handle it? Absolutely not, so I’m moving on to Face 5, which I don’t have a name for yet. I’m still developing the outlook for this face. I want to accept the situation, but not live inside of it. I want to be able to develop myself for my own betterment, but not so much that I leave so many pieces of myself behind and I’m unrecognizable when Ryan comes home. I want to survive as a woman living single, but feeling married all the while. This has been hard, especially when my natural instinct is to detach, detach, detach. I’ve had a few setbacks in my pursuit of a new face; Face 2 reared its ugly head the other day when I was exhausted and vulnerable. I also know that deployment is like a roller coaster, during which you go through periods of strength and weakness. I’m going to go through these faces all over again in the coming weeks when Ryan comes home and leaves again. I’ll keep you posted on that – I’m sure a few more faces will develop. I still don’t know what’s the best course of action to deal with this very unique situation, but I wish someone had put in the user’s manual that Schizophrenia was a side effect of separation.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Rollercoasters and Flaming Torches

When I woke up this morning to the sound of my phone ringing and my husband’s voice at the other end, I knew it was going to be a good day. Waking up to his voice, when I couldn’t wake up to him, was a welcome jolt out of the crazy dreams I’d been having all night long. It didn’t take long for me to realize that today would be one of those days that I just knew I was meant to experience. This day was waiting for me to get to it. It was hiding around the corner, hoping I would keep my chin up long enough to see it. I proceeded to my yoga class, hoping for some continued enlightenment. Now, I should say, that I never go to the gym on Saturday mornings. Typically, I spend the day garage sale hunting, thrift store shopping, and relaxing in parks, reading books under shady trees with my better half. This particular lonely morning, I felt a strong pull toward yoga class at the Y and pushed myself to go. My instructor began our practice with a discussion about finding light in the darkness. It was like she had read into my thoughts and knew just want I needed to hear this morning. She told us that, often times we go through life weaving in and out of the light and dark periods and that we should expect to do that. After all, it’s like they say, you can’t truly appreciate the light until you’ve experienced the dark. What’s important, though, is being able to look within yourself to find the light, point your heart toward it and bring yourself to it. Well, I know you probably think I already knew that. And I did. It’s just, sometimes you need to wait until the perfect day and moment to hear it. And I mean really hear it and let it soak in. Today was that day and 9:03 am was that moment.

You know, it’s funny. Sometimes I feel as though I am living my life, not walking a straight line, but rolling through a rollercoaster shaped track. I go through cycles and, at this point, I should be able to tell what’s up ahead and what’s necessary to survive it, at least generally. This is not to say that every time I re-enter the cycle the scenarios are the same or are predictable in any way. That would make for an incredibly boring ride and not one I’d be interested in taking. What I mean is that I seem to come across the same problems presented in different formats and each time I see them, I get to try a new way of approaching them. I should, at this point, be able to read or guess which part of the cycle I am entering. Am I going to climb steadily upward, hoofing and sweating it all the way, reaching for the top with my hands stretched out and up, eager and ready for the rush that comes with a quick and fast plummet down? Or am I about to fly over the top of the climb, rolling downward with my hands up, my eyes open, enjoying every minute of the best part of the ride, headed for another valley? And yet, every time I stop to look around, I find myself feeling surprised to actually be at any given part of the ride, thinking “how did I get here and what the hell is going to come next?” That’s where I found myself when my yoga instructor intersected my thoughts with her wisdom.

I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in the last 6 months. I’ll probably go into many of them in more detail in the coming posts, but let’s just say it’s definitely been a ride. Leaving my job with such bittersweet feelings, coming to terms with moving cross country, being unemployed for 7 months, getting married, and adjusting to my new Marine Corps life, just to name a few. Between all of the disappointments and life changes I feel like I’ve lost my way somewhere along the path. I took a left turn and all of a sudden I’m in California, no where near teaching, living alone with my 3 cats. What the hell happened? Well, the darkness happened. And in the midst of it happening I, yet again, didn’t pay attention to where I was going and forgot to look for the signs of the reoccurring cycle. I, a woman well versed in the cycles of the darkness emerging into light, should have understood that the darkness was imminent and I needed to rely on myself to rub two sticks together to find some light. Well, I guess today you could say I found my two sticks. Somewhere between my yoga class and sitting here tonight I picked them up on the path. I’m still looking for the proper method of rubbing those sticks together to get the best source of light. At this point, I need a flaming torch to hold high out of this darkness. In order to get to that sort of illumination I need to keep my heart pressing outward, reaching toward the light, with the knowledge that it’s up ahead. If I keep my hands extended up and out long enough, the anticipation of that rollercoaster climb will be met with the thrill of the downhill rush, wind in my face exhilaration of freedom that comes from knowing you’d reach the top of the climb eventually and be paid back in full for holding out that long.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Well, it's a beginning

Well, here we go. I've been telling myself for the longest time that I should start a blog - to give a booster shot to my desire to write, to communicate with those who I am away from, and to talk. Sometimes I just need to talk. I don't know what form this blog is going to take. I don't even know if there will be a shape to it. No themes, no direction - just me, talking. So, here goes...

I’m pretty sure that writing has saved my life – both on individual occasions as well as on the whole. However, it seems that just as with any saving mechanism, once it is sapped of its use, it is cast aside until it is needed again. If I were an honest woman, I would admit that, although I have thought about sitting down to write on several occasions, I have actively decided not to. I’m not sure why; since writing was my bread and butter for so long, and I even became a spokeswoman for its powers and promises, I feel a bit of a hypocrite as I sit here in a state of penance. I feel like there must be some literary equivalent to 10 “Hail Maries”and 5 “Our Fathers” that would save me from the sins I have committed against writing itself. There have been so many occasions to document that I have simply let pass me by. There have been so many feelings and thoughts that I’ve wanted to share, but I’ve let them sit restless in the files of my brain. If you were to ask me why, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I probably couldn’t even lie my way out of it. I’ve been asked before, and at the time, it was easy to say that I was tired or out of time. It was nothing at all to lay the blame on my job, my Masters degree or my status as a wedding planner. Well, a lot has happened since then and I find myself in a place now where I think I need this more than ever.

Truthfully, it was pure laziness. It was fear. It was a constant thought that if I sat down to write, would I really have anything worthwhile to say? Rubbish! I had plenty to say. I had students who, every day, made me rethink who I was as an individual. Young people who made me question myself and my actions every few minutes. These reflections, which I promised in my academic musings only a short time ago, were the fruits of my labor – or at least they should have been. There was no daily, weekly, bi-monthly journal that I kept to reflect upon my teaching strategies. There was no cathartic admission of truths and fears during my time at EBMI. For all of this I am ashamed. I am ashamed to call myself a writer, and when asked, I have purposely left it out of almost every description of myself for the last several months. People ask what interests me and I feel it would be a ruse, a lie even, to tell them that I’m a writer. To classify myself with people who commit themselves to it, especially when it’s hard. Writing saved my life once upon a time and I have let writing down as if it were something I had the right to lay down and walk away from.

So, let's set the stage then, shall we? Where is it I find myself, you ask? The answer to that is multi-dimensional. First, I find myself married, which is a change that has affected my life in so many ways I can't even begin to comprehend them all. I find myself on the West Coast, far away from my family and friends and everything else I feel comfortable with. I find myself alone in a big place. I find myself at odds with the dreams and goals I have worked my entire life to achieve. I find myself needing people, but constantly without them. I find myself needing this. I find myself. Everyday.