News

  While I've been trying to cut down on blogging, things have happened that have made it really difficult to stay away. It's just a bad idea to write when things are fresh and I'm upset about something. Even when I try to talk to people individually when I'm upset it's sometimes a bad idea. I think it's because I don't want to be told how to make my situation better, that I should change my attitude or suck it up, I just want someone to listen and try to understand so I feel less crazy and alone.
  After graduating Michael was put into a new unit. We held our breath for a moment because between the two units he could go into, one was deploying next year and one wasn't.
  Guess which unit he got?
  Michael kept giving me the "it's bound to happen, this is what I expect" speech but it wasn't any less heartbreaking. Some people go into the army and don't deploy at all their entire contract. After we got stuck here more permanently I sort of thought we'd end up dodging that bullet.
  So after a few days I started to feel okay about it. It wasn't for quite a while, we don't have to focus on it and it also means I get to live in Arizona again. (No way in hell I'm living in Oklahoma for no reason without my husband, are you kidding?) It still feels like one big ticking clock scenario, like waiting for him to go to bootcamp only much much worse, but we have time.
  Now that he's not a trainee, he's supposed to do something related to his job, or at least that's what we thought. Instead they told him he'd be on "detail" which can be anything from janitorial work to sitting in a room for up to 24 hours watching screens. He ended up getting a really strange one; the latter mentioned detail every three days. 16-24 hours doing basically nothing. It didn't seem so bad until a day later, when they said
   "Oh by the way, this detail requires that you can't take leave for 6 months."
  Meaning no Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or any Arizona vacation until May. Next year. And he's deploying! Finding that out shattered any hope I had left of feeling normal until Michael gets out of the army. I want so much to be home with family this year for the holidays. But I can't leave if I'm not going to see him for the holidays next year.
  I hate this, I hate feeling like he's being controlled and in turn feeling like part of my life is controlled. I don't want this. I just want a normal life with my husband. I'm sure that's how a lot of military wives feel. But for whatever reason it's taken control of everything. I'm too afraid to do anything useful with my life because I'm so worried something is going to change again and I'll have to drop it to move on again. I'm not used to this, I have a really hard time handling this. That much is true. I just want to be surrounded by people I know who can distract me, not lecture me, so I can start feeling better.
  Sometimes the advice I get can feel like a lecture, and it makes me want to scream not only because I keep hearing the same thing from different people, but because most of them have no idea what this is like and all of them don't know how I think or why I'm having such a difficult time. Everything about my "situation" sucks out my soul and energy and no matter what I do something always happens to break me down again. Everyone says "distract yourself, join a group, go meet people." But I'm kind of socially retarded. And I have no motivation.
  I just need to vent sometimes, not be told how to think and feel. It bothers me a lot. I'm having a really hard time being optimistic, and I can tell that Michael is starting to feel unhappy too, which is hard to see. We need to go home, to recharge, but he's not allowed to, and I'd feel so guilty going home without him right now. He might "understand" that I need to, but it wouldn't make me feel any better leaving him alone on a holiday when I won't even be able to see him next year.
  I don't know, everything feels so gloomy right now.