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.