What is an Army Wife Anyway?

A friend of mine has gotten me thinking about Army wives.  What of them?  I am one.  We’re nothing special.  You look at us and aside from those that wear something proclaiming them as being associated with the military, they look just like everyone else.  Some have green hair, or pink.  Some wear contacts.  Some wear funky glasses.  Some dress with class.  Others dress like street rable or club girls.  Some knit.  Some dance.  Some go out drinking.  Some watch a lot of television.  Some have kids.  Some don’t.  We’re just like everyone else.

However, they are usually different.  Their families are torn apart for a year at a time, sometimes more.  They are forced to live alone while the one they care about is away at war.  Some of them worry a lot.  Some of them try and pretend it doesn’t bother them.  Some of them have a stronger front than others.  Some of them bear the burden more easily, but any woman that loves her husband still feels that pain, longing, and sorrow.

Yes, I have to make the distinction.  Unfortunately, there are some women that are just out to use soldiers.  There are some women who don’t care what their husbands do.  There are some women who cheat on their husbands out of lonliness, anger, or total lack of regard for the person they married.  There are women who can’t wait for their husband to leave so they can spend the extra money and put up the revolving door.  I’ll be honest, not all Army wives are the loving, faithful types that you hope to hear about in romance novels and romantic movies.  I’ll also be honest, not all soldiers are faithful either.  There are those kinds in all walks of life, and unfortunately, they give the rest a bad name.

Army wives are some of the strongest, most passionate people you will ever meet.  Some of them forge their strength through their trials with being married to the Army.  Some of them forged their path earlier in life and use that strength to help them get by.  However, they all use it, that strong foundation that keeps them together when everything seems too dire and dark.  They all have that common bond and common understanding.

I would love to say that some of my closest friends are Army wives.  I would love to say the bonds go as deep as I always thought they would.  In truth, that’s not always the case.  With those associated to the Army, they’re a fickle lot.  They’re tricky in their own way.  Some groups are gossip mongers and rumor mills.  Others are just very selective in the company they keep.  I’ll be honest, while I do have a few Army wife friends, a good deal of them don’t like me because I’ve dared to shave my head, dyed my hair green, and wear odd and unusual clothing.  Some of them find me strange because I’m a belly dancer and fire performer.  Some of them just find me unusual, like that exotic woman that no one ever gets to know.  I’ll be truthful, there’s a lot of prejudice in the military.  It’s not highly racial, though that happens too.  However, there’s prejudice against Muslims and Pagans.  It’s gotten better on the Pagan front, but for the Muslims, it’s going to be hard until the Middle East is no longer a point of conflict.

I’ve had hard times in the Army life, I’ll be honest.  Things have not always been great.  Actually, things have often been down-right frustrating.  My FRG has been useless.  I don’t even know if my e-mail was passed on to the new FRG leader.  Many of the "friends" I had early on were hurtful and judgmental because I was more of a freak than they were.  However, I’ll be fair, I’ve found good people here too.  I’ve started to build my support system, but it takes time, just like in every walk of life.  These women are quick to help and just as quick to harm, and in many cases they don’t even realize they’re being hurtful through lack of life experience.  It happens.  It’s okay.  We each grow up in our own time and many of these wives started this life before they even knew much about living on their own.  Some of them have finished college, but many of them haven’t.  Many of them went straight to having families of their own and never got to follow their own life dreams and goals.  It’s a sad thing.  It makes things harder for them.  They have to learn to live and move on.

Friendships are fleeting things, though you never really lose touch.  People may go away for a while or grow distant.  They may withdraw from your life entirely when their husband comes home only to come back when the next deployment begins.  It’s not that they don’t care, or that they only want you around when they’re having a hard time.  That’s not it at all.  In reality, they want to spend their every last moment with the one they love before he gets shipped off to some exotic land across an ocean for a year or more.  They always come back.  Even when they move away to sme far off place, they’re still always there to make you smile when you need it, even if it’s just in a comment on your MySpace page of some kitten doing something entirely too cute.  They’re always there whether you see them regularly or not, and they always listen.

They are a very opinionated sort.  They have to be with the dramatic independence they learn from spending so much time alone.  They like things to be the way they want it.  If they have a thought on something, they say it.  Many of them are anti-war.  Even more are against the war for Iraqi freedom.  Some of them are protesters.  Some are even pro-war!  They run the scope from feminist to anti-feminist, from pro choice to pro life.  They stand up for those beliefs and they’d let you know it if your beliefs conflict with theirs, even if there is no discussion or debate.  Agree to disagree seems to be a common thing with Army wives.  If only the rest of the world were so open!  Above all else, a real Army wife supports her husband.  She may call him her soldier, or not, as she pleases.  She may think of him as her hero, or not.  I don’t consider my husband to be my soldier or a hero.  I consider him to be a determined man who does his job.  I support his decisions.  I support what he does.  However, I don’t support the war he’s fighting in, or not fighting as the case may be.  So often they spend their time sitting around, waiting for something to happen, torn between wanting to feel like their doing something and praying that things remain calm.  They get bored over there when things get calm.  To be honest, we Army wives like that!  We’d rather them be bored, playing video games or watching movies.  We’d rather them be reading, playing cards, joking, or making those silly videos we’ve all surely seen of soldiers dancing in Iraq.

Army wives don’t protest in i

nappropriate places.  We would never protest at the gate to a base.  We’d never protest a funeral.  We know that these men are doing their jobs, following orders.  A lot of them don’t want to go over there.  A lot of them don’t want to go back over there.  However, they do.  They do it because it’s their job.  Yes, there are those that go AWOL, but for every soldier that does, there countless more that stand their post and do their job day after day even if they hate it.  We know they don’t deserve to have their jobs interupted or their families bothered because they did their job or they died for their job, for their country.  We know it’s not them who are to blame.  It’s the government, so we choose places of protest wisely, if we protest at all.

Unlike the rest of the world, we have to get used to things.  We have to show our ID at the check out if we shop on post.  We have to dig out an ID just to go on post!  After all of that, it’s almost strange not to need to dig out an ID to go home every night.  We have to use our husband’s social security number for just about anything we want done in the military.  We know what a POA is and what kind we need while our husbands are deployed.  We’re used to talking about things no one thinks about anymore, like going to balls and looking for a gown.  We send out care packages, regularly, and know exactly what goodies can go in the boxes.  We’re crazier than most people to dive across the room to catch the baby’s first steps so that Daddy can see it, even though Daddy lies so far away.  And if we’re mom’s we not only know that Elmo’s dad is in the military, but know the whole deployment DVD by heart!

When our husbands are home, we learn to ignore the upcoming deployments until they’re upon us.  It’s too depressing to count down the days.  It’s going to happen, sooner or later.  We all know it.  Unless your lucky enough to be married to someone non-deployable, then you’ll have to deal with it.  We don’t want to.  No one does.  So we just don’t think about it.  We push it to the backs of our minds and live in the moment, life in the now.  After the deployment starts, that’s when we start marking off the calendar, watching the time tick down to the expected end, then wait like crazy ladies for the dates to be made available.  We wait for the soldiers to come home, usually with a field of other teary eyed women.  We look across the crowd of men that all look the same.  We try to pick them out, though we know it’s impossible.  We want to strangle the people who make speeches and delay the time it takes for us to find our loved one’s arms, and then the process starts all over again.  We push the idea of the next one off until we can no longer avoid it anymore.

What kind of life is that?  It’s a tough one.  It’s one with lots of trials.  It’s one with lots of separations and lots of frustrations.  It’s a life with lots of pain and sorrow.  However, in order to feel the highest of happinesses, one must feel the lowest of sorrows.  The more you suffer, the more you can appreciate the more beautiful things in life.  Those moments of happiness and joy become all the more valuable because you know those moments are fleeting and pass all too quickly.

So what is it to be an Army wife?  Nothing much really.  You take an average woman.  You give her a surprising amount of sorrow and pain.  Then you add the greatest joy in the world.  That’s what it takes to be an Army wife.  They truly live on the rollercoaster of life, flying through every turn, screaming for their lives, and when they’re done, they come back for more.  Why?  Because their loved one is that rollercoaster train.  Until it’s retired, it follows the same path again and again, and to be with that loved one, you’ve got to stay on the ride…

To all my Army wife friends out there, I don’t know how you do it!  I don’t know how I do it!  But we do it.  We live the life.  We are survivors.  Nothing can keep us down.  For the friend I wrote this for, welcome to the life.  Think of that first deployment as your initiation.  It won’t be fun.  It won’t be pretty.  It’ll be hard as hell, but once you’ve done one, you know you can do it.  If you can do that, then you can do the next one, and the next one.  It will be hard, but you’ll find a way.  That’s one thing that can be said about Army wives.  Whether you love them or hate them, they won’t let you go through this alone!  They’ll drag you out of your misery, kicking and screaming the whole way if they have to!

~*~Raven Night~*~