Second Sight & Third Thoughts

I’m perfectly aware that I can’t tell this to anyone else, because there’s no way they would ever understand. You might not either.

Alan called me just before 2:30 AM to tell me that as of right now, he has the choice of getting on a plane to come home tomorrow or staying until the end of the deployment window and being with the very last group to come back. And he wanted me to decide.

Fucking A, right? That’s a lot to put on a person at 2:30 in the morning!

Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate that he realized a decision of that magnitude should be made together. I would have been seriously pissed if I’d found out down the line that he made that choice without talking to me first. But at the same time, I wish there was some way that he could have just told them he would stay without ever having to tell me that he had the option to come home early.

I say that because in a lot of ways, he was really asking permission to stay. I think it was the decision he’d already come to and he wanted to make sure it was okay with me.

But at the same time, it puts me in a horrible position. Because if I tell him to come home, I’m doing damage to his career and I worry that he’ll resent me for it. If I tell him to stay, it’s as if I’m telling him I don’t want him here.

And in a way, I don’t want him here. Not yet anyway. The thought of him coming home – BEING home in less than a week – sent me into an absolute panic. I miss him and I want him home, but at the same time, I’m not mentally ready for it at all. It’s such a huge transition and adjustment that I don’t think I could manage it in a few days without having a complete nervous breakdown. I have all these plans that would just be completely derailed by him coming home. Not least of which is that I JUST booked a flight to Connecticut for the second half of September for Pippa and me. I’ve planned that trip around appointments we both have. I haven’t lost the weight I want to lose before I see him again. I want a little more time reveling in my fantasies of Dr. Rocco. If he were to come home, he probably wouldn’t go to the promotion board until February or March whereas if he stays, he’ll go in October and may even be a Sergeant before he gets home. I was prepared for the end of November or early December. It’s been set in my brain all this time and I don’t think I could adjust so fast.

But when I write all that, it just seems so selfish. And then I think that asking him to come home would be selfish too. Because he wanted this deployment. And the fact that they’re asking him to stay to the very end and help wrap things up there is really great. He’s doing his job and he’s doing it very well and people who matter can see that. The possibility of promotion is important to him too. I think he feels a lot of pressure to provide for us… well, for Pippa specifically (he didn’t worry this much when it was just me). A promotion would obviously help that.

Like, I said – it felt that he was asking my permission to stay. I don’t resent him for wanting to stay, but I think what’s tearing me up inside is the fact that I not only don’t resent his desire to stay, I actively want him to. I want to see him and I want him to come home safe and sound and I realize that the longer he stays there, the more chance there is that he won’t (but not really any greater than either of us dying in a car accident here). But in a way I don’t want to see him yet. I’ll count every moment until he’s home, but I don’t want to reduce how many of those moments are left except by the natural passage of time.

I guess I just don’t feel ready for it. So will I really be ready for it when the time comes? Will the next three months make it easier? Allow me to adjust my brain back into married and together mode? To somehow accept the changes I’ll have to make to how Pippa and I operate? Right now, three months is a long time in the future for someone who isn’t even 6 months old.

I’m second-guessing myself. I’m also feeling really bad that a huge part of me says that this is the best decision for everyone concerned. So maybe I’m not second-guessing myself so much as am I terrified about how other people would see me if I tried to explain. Is my reasoning so cold and selfish? And is that really a bad thing to be in this situation? I’m not sure emotional decision-making is the best thing for an Army wife.

So here I am at 3:45 in the morning, crying intermittently and dealing with a horrible pressure in my chest that I relate to being physically ill, completely aware that I may not sleep for the rest of the night and wondering if there was any way I could have made a decision that wouldn’t have resulted in the exact same situation.

~Liz