Put Your Big Girl Panties On and Deal With It.

Let me preface this by saying that I do not mean to offend anyone in anyway.  I'm simply stating my opinion here, and I might get mean, and say some not very nice things, but I have to get this off my chest already!

Recently I was browsing around a forum, and a thread caught my attention...well, I knew it was a bad idea to even open the thread, but I was in it for a good read.  Yeah right!  This particular thread was posted by a woman who's husband has been in the military for 15+ years and he is getting activated for his second ever deployment.  Wow, must be rough.  She's newly pregnant, and he will be gone for most of the pregnancy and definitely for the birth.  I know she was on the forum solely looking for advice and words of encouragement, but it struck a nerve in me.  She went on to say that she's strong and independant, but she can't "do all of baby year one alone".  BS is what I say...

I get that the forum is a place to vent and bitch and moan, look for advice and support and give advice and support, but this came across as whiny to me.  She did get some good feedback, people telling her that women do it all the time, its the military way, blah blah blah.  I can honestly say that I feel for her, as her hubby is in the Army, so he will be gone anywhere from 12-15 months, and that's a long ass time to have your loved one away fighting in a war torn country where bad shit happens all the time, but at the same time, he's been in for 15 plus years...and this is only the second deployment!

Jake has been in the Air Force for just about 8 years and in those years, he's been deployed 4 times already.  Just the deployments alone are 18 months of him not being with me, or the kids!  And if I really wanted to get into it and sit down and figure in all the TDY's he's been on, its been over 2 years for sure.  There's only been one deployment that he's ever been on where I have been home with family and friends close by, and that was the first one, we weren't even married at that time!!

The second and third deployments we were in Japan and they were rough...the first of those being when I delivered Parker.  I was very fortunate to have my mom there, but she was all I had.  Jake and I hadn't been in Japan long when we got pregnant with Parker, and we hadn't established close ties with anyone there, so I didn't really have much of an adult support system...Yes, I was working all throughout my pregnancy, but I was hanging out with teenagers.  True enough they kept me in good spirits during the pregnancy, but after Parker was born, I was on my own!  And it was tough.  By the time the third deployment rolled around, I had an awesome circle of friends and we had get togethers planned all the time, so that deployment flew by.  The worst of it was the fact that it was right smack in the middle of the holidays.  But, thanks to our friends there, I made it through unscathed!

This deployment hasn't been so easy.  We moved here to Hawaii in December, got a puppy less than two weeks after we got here, moved into a new place, had a baby in January and found out that Jake was slotted for a 6 month deployment!  All in 2 short months.  Talk about stressful!  So Jake got deployed in May, and you know Murphy's Law...anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and all while the spouse is gone!  So, yes, its been one thing after another here, but never once have I said that I can't do this on my own!  I know I do my fair share of pissin' and moanin' about it, but if it weren't for the friends that I've made here keeping me sane, I would've lost it a long time ago.

The thing about deployments is, they never get any easier.  The dynamics change, the challenges are always there, but you just have to do things one day at a time.  The first 2 weeks are usually the hardest.  Its all about establishing a routine that you can live with as a single parent.  The kids are bound to act out, but they don't understand what is going on.  You're sure to get some unwanted advice, but you have to take that in stride.  In the end, you're going to have to suck it up and do what you gotta do, because if you don't, then your spouse that's deployed has one more thing to worry about.  They need to be confident that you're doing ok at home, taking care of things that you need to take care of.  They need to be able to focus on the mission they're tasked with while they're deployed.  The last thing they want to hear is that you can't do it alone while they're gone.  It takes away from their focus, and its a guarantee that their morale is going to suffer big time.

I don't know...I guess I just don't see how a full grown woman can go into a relationship with a man in the military,  knowing full well that, no matter what branch he serves in, he will eventually have to be deployed.  They start their family together and then when he does get tasked, all the sudden she can't do it on her own...I knew when Jake asked me to marry him, that at some point I would have to be alone while he's off supporting and defending our great nation.  Its a fact of life being a military wife, and if I'm not here supporting my husband and maintaining our home life, then he can't be 100% focused on what he has to do there...So I just put my big girl panties on and deal with it!