So you think you’re doing good. This is your second deployment. You remember past mistakes and you’re on top of righting the wrongs from the last deployment. It’s a learning curve, but you think you’ve started to figure it out. You’re building confidence. You’ve got this in the bag. Right?... Wrong. Before the deployment even starts you start to watch things fall apart. You think to yourself, how can this be? The deployment hasn’t even started yet. The support system you thought you built starts falling apart and you’re left scrambling trying to reconfigure your plans. So, what do you do? Stop. Think for a second. Try to think about what you REALLY need from your support system and not what your expectations were. First, you have to remember, not everyone signed up for this. The sacrifices you’re making can’t forcibly be everyone else’s sacrifices. I’ll admit, I’m writing this all in retrospect. When it first started to happen, I felt frustrated, hurt, confused, and overwhelmed. Then, I gave it some thought, and once I did that, I realized something. So, first let me say the only real snafu that I had was that I wasn’t going to have as much help with watching my children so that I could continue to work as I had originally thought. Actually, it was looking like I was most likely going to have to quit my job as we got closer to deployment and of course I immediately thought about the possible financial strain and stress this was gonna put me under. What I hadn’t thought about was the fact that my children were gonna be losing an unbearable amount of time with their dad and stepdad and that maybe my presence in the home on a more full time basis might be beneficial to them. Once I let the wall come down, I realized that my family never said that they weren’t gonna be there. It was just their ability to help with certain things that might be limited, and to no fault of their own. While I might have been looking for more help with certain things, I wasn’t losing everything. I thought back to the last deployment to try to remember what it was that I truly needed to survive this time away from each other. I found that there was only one answer to that question. That answer, a very simple answer if you ask me, was emotional support and my family around me…. And that much I still had. It was time to put my big girl panties on and admit that it was me and me alone that had agreed to be a part of this life and build a family in all the uncertainties that this life has to offer, and baby let me tell you, there’s a shit ton of them. Uncertainties. BUT….. there’s also so much beauty to be found in it, if you can keep your head on straight long enough to see them. I’ll admit, it’s no easy task, but THAT is what your support system is for. THAT, is what your family is for. Not to take the place of your husband or spouse and the responsibilities that you share as a couple, but to be there to offer moral and emotional support when things get tough and you feel yourself coming unglued. Together, separately, one at a time, or all at once, they can help glue and hold those pieces of you together while you figure it all out. It’s not fair to put on them the responsibilities that you chose to assume as a couple. They can’t be a replacement or a substitute while he’s away, but they can be a safety net, and to that I can say i have the strongest of ropes tied together to fall back into. This is why I can say, (now that I have taken the time to absorb it all and let my defenses down), I know that my support system is still there. They are fully in place, ready to catch me any time I feel like I’m falling apart. So this would be my advice to anyone else in my situation. Don’t get scared the second your plan catches a snag. They may not be everything that your spouse is supposed to be while he’s at home, but they will still be everything that you need them to be while he’s gone, and that is all you need to make it through the darker days that lies ahead.
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