People often ask me ‘How do I do it?”. How do I get through
each day with three kids and my husband being deployed? The most honest answer I
can give is… I Lie.
I lie to myself every day.
I tell myself I can
do this. I will do this. It’s only three months, it’s not that bad. But that
three months stretches in my mind. It’s kinda like in a movie when someone’s
looking down a hallway and all of a sudden the hallway seems to go on forever. So
then I lie again. I tell myself he’ll only be gone for a week. Then when the
weekend comes I lie again saying it will be next weekend. Artificially it
helps. I know deep down I am full of BS, but for that moment when it hurts the
most, lying doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.
I lie to everyone else.
Behind every forced smile there lives a lie. Every ‘We’re doing
fine’ and ‘We’ll be okay’ is just another whopper I tell. But people don’t
really want to hear the truth. No one wants to hear how every time they bring
the deployment up I want to break down in tears. Or how I can’t sleep at night
because I wake up every hour from all the stress. Nobody wants to hear the sad
truth of what goes on behind closed separated family’s doors, because there
really isn’t much they can do to help. They want to help. They do help. Every
gesture from small to large is greatly appreciated, but it’s impossible for
anyone to fill that void in our family’s life. So I lie. I smile to ease the
discomfort for both our sakes.
I lie in wait.
It doesn’t matter how long your loved one is deployed for. Your
life universally is put on hold. Of course time doesn’t stand still for anyone,
and life all around you moves on; but your own household is stuck. Yes I go to
work every day, and the kids go to school every day and every day they grow
just a little bit more. But in an essence, we are static. We are moving, sometimes
forward and yet sometimes in place. I feel a
certain guilt for enjoying the small things around me when he’s not able to be
here to share them with me. However I feel guilty that I am not enjoying it
enough for my kids. And my self-pity can sometimes overwhelm me; my loneliness
robs me of breath at times. So I lie. I lie in bed at night and beg God, with
tears soaking my pillow, to please keep him safe. I beg Him to push the fast
forward button on our lives and skip my favorite time of year so that I won’t
have to endure them without my best friend. But in doing so, in all of my self- pity, I rob
my family of now. I rob them of the strength and support and normalcy of these
three months. So for them I will stand tall during the day, but at night I will
allow myself to lie.
