Living On Denial

In 3 days, 5 hours, and 54 minutes, my family and I will begin living in denial.

Hey, it works for the President. Why not me?

Of course, it could be argued that the last person on the planet who should be living in denial is GWB, but I digress.

When you have a loved one in harm’s way, sometimes the only way to cope is to live in denial of the danger they are in.

It’s hard enough trying to do the day to day without having that physical and emotional support that you married into. Daddy’s “job” around the house now becomes your job, if you are married to a soldier who is deployed. If your kids are driving your crazy, you can’t really threaten them with “wait ’til your father comes home…”, because it’s going to be a long a@@ time before justice is meted out.

And forget about sex. For 15 months! After so many deployments, eventually the idea of finding comfort in a “battery-operated boyfriend” gets very, very old. When you get married, many of us expect to retire “BOB” to the toy box, only to be brought out for those “wild” nights when you want to spice things up. I can tell you that for many military spouses, “BOB” becomes as much a substitute for sex as email becomes for “positive communication” between a homebound and deployed spouse.

Everything has a substitute. Of course, when you are dealing with sending your spouse to a war-zone for the third time, those substitutes become meaningless…unless, you live in denial.

So, you accentuate the “positive” or things most single people take for granted and some married people envy. For instance, no more socks and undies on his side of the bed. No more tripping over his shoes. No more getting smacked or kicked in the middle of the night as he rolls over. You control the remote control. You control what movies to watch. You get to make sure the toilet paper goes on “correctly” or that regular chores are done “the right way”. You control the car radio or what gets installed on the family computer. You might get a chance to curb those annoying habits that Daddy is teaching to the little ones. Heck, you get a 15 month break from Daddy’s annoying habits. Your snoring will not be interrupted by his.

Of course, the downside is, if the sh@t hits the fan, you are on your own to deal with it. Despite all the rosy things you hear about “supporting the spouses” when the troops are deployed, I can tell you, from my own personal experience, that whenever I have needed help or support from the Army, in almost ten years, I have NEVER been able to rely on the Army or my husband’s unit, to help me when I needed it most. Maybe I’m not kissing the right a@@es, but, truthfully, when my husband is away, I prefer not to mingle too much with other deployed spouses. A lot of the time, whether we mean to, or not, our conversations turn to games of oneupmanship, where we spend our time comparing how many emails, how often he calls, how many angry tirades, how much money he spends, and so on and so on. The first time this happens, it’s enlightening, but eventually it gets very old if your spouse is doing “better” or “worse” than their spouse (apparently) is.

Thankfully, I find solace in my business and my blogging. They are marvelous distractions when the days and nights get too long.

It is easy to live in denial when your spouse tells you that he is stationed in a “safe” area and that his job will not be dangerous. It is even easier to pretend that all is well when you get to hear from your loved one every day.

The insecurity sets in when you hear about something “bad” happening in that “safe” area or when you haven’t heard from your spouse in more than 48 hours, due to a media blackout (translation: when a soldier has been hurt or killed).

To alleviate stress and deal with the every day and day to day struggles that most married couples deal with side by side, you have to live in denial or else it would be too difficult to cope. In 3 days, I will revert to a pretend life where Daddy is just going on a very long trip. I’ll try not to think about where his trip is taking him.

Most of all, I’ll pretend not to worry about him. I’ll pretend to my kids that’s it completely normal for Daddies to be at work for so many days. I’ll pretend to the world around me that I can cope with being a single mom (at least, I get to control how much “alimony” I get). I’ll pretend that nothing bad can happen. And, if everything goes “best case scenario”, he’ll be home in “no time” (plus 15 months) and life will be “normal”, again…until the next deployment (?).

Trust me, in denial or not, I am going to “enjoy” some of the “positive” aspects of his deployment, for a little while, at least. But, this whole routine is getting very old.

I wish our President would stop living in denial and call an end to our engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sadly, it appears that “Bushliburton” is determined to ride that river of d’nile all the way to Iran and it appears there is no legislator, willing or able, to stop him.

A deployed spouse may have no choice but to live in denial to get by, but it’s a shame that our President has chosen to live that way.