I have a point of view. It is lost.
I have no objectivity left. There is no black and white.
I am in pain. I have caused pain.
I am empty. I feed the emptiness. There is a hole. I am empty again.
It is darkest before the dawn. The dawn never comes. It has been night for months.
I call for help. The line is busy. I call again. I am put on hold.
I love. I miss.
I am surrounded. I am totally alone.
I start. But I am done.
~2004 Cass Harroun
The tide comes in to wash away our castles in the sand.
Our palaces that last one day will crumble in our hand.
The tallest wave grows in the sun and dies in tiny streams.
They take our castles one by one but cannot take our dreams.
~1988 Cass Leming
Some things are so obvious that they totally go by you. And some things are just obvious enough that you should see them right off.
Nothing is more annoying that having the obvious stated to you. Except having the obvious asked of you.
So, to those tactless, or perhaps just curious people, let me just answer you.
~ Yes, I miss my husband when he is deployed.
~ Yes, it is hard to be apart for that long.
~ Yes, I miss sex.
~ I guess I handle it just because I have to.
Actually, let me just sum up all the question regarding me and deployment with one answer.
~ Yes, deployment sucks. Balls. End of story.
And then are the ones that everyone asks about military life in general.
~ Yes, moving is tough.
~ Yes, I miss my friends and family.
~ No, I don’t always support the war, but I will always support my husband and other soldiers.
~ Well, it is my husband’s job. It doesn’t matter if I agree with war.
~ Wait, has my husband ever killed anyone? Really? You think that is your business why?
And on and on and on. I try to be patient. Sometimes it is tough though. I think the toughest part is answering with a straight face and a real answer.
Every now and then, I cheat.
~ Hell yeah dood. War rocks!
~ Killed anyone? You mean at war or at home? Cuz really, I don’t think they can prove anything.
~ Miss sex? Wait. I was supposed to stop cuz he left?
Not really. I never use those answers. Much.
It really is obvious you know. I do this because I love my husband. I do this because I believe in my husband. I do this because no one at McDonald’s wanted to date me. I am totally kidding. Those kids were all about this Cougar.
So, when you meet a military wife. Really. We do things like most people. We just do it differently at times.
We still have Christmas as a family, we just do it over webcam. We still laugh at all the little things that happen everyday, we just make a list and share them all at once. We still fight over money. (I just win more often because he is so far away.) We still raise our families, just with one parent playing two roles.
Still you ask, why do we do it? It really is obvious you know.
We do it for love.
I want to write. I want to get it out. And yet I don’t. Seeing it in writing, that just seems to make it more real.
I want to be selfish. Not take the last piece of cake selfish, but truly selfish. The most selfish act of all.
But I can’t. Because it will cause pain to people I love.
I love my husband, my family, my friends. I just don’t love me. I want to. I want to see what other people see. I want to love what other people love.
I just can’t.
I don’t want pity. I don’t want reassurances.
I want truth. I want help. I want to quit hearing the same song in my head over and over and over.
I want to sleep.
As a lot of you have written to me have noticed, I have taken a break from my ABCs series. And from so much more than that.
Lately, I have been wanting, and taking, a break from life. From reality. Or maybe I am just starting to face it. I don’t know.
I have so much going on in my life right now. I have turned inward. I am not sure what is important. What is a priority. What is worth letting go of. What is worth fighting for. I am mentally, physically and emotionally spent.
But did I fight the good fight? Did I win? Did I lose? Did I win by losing, or vice versa? I don’t know.
Maybe it isn’t yet time for me to tell my story. Maybe it is time for someone else to.
I feel like, in the words of Kelly Clarkson (yeah, I know), I’m already gone.
What’s next?
In life, you have some idea of what comes next. For the most part. But we can’t see it all. Unless, of course, you are co-hosting with Dionne Warwick.
There are the obvious things. Birth, aging, kindergarten, school, career, relationships, maybe kids, more aging and then death.
But other than birth and death, the rest of the order is rather a surprise. There is the timeline of events that is the norm. And then there is the timeline of events that is MY life.
Even with all the ‘Whoops, how did that happens’ in my life, nothing prepared me for this new life as an Army wife.
Because now, ‘next’ is three different things. It is what you expect to happen next. It is what they tell you what will happen next. And more often than not, it is what atually does happen next.
When I married B Daddy, we both new that our life in Grand Junction was coming to an end. Recruiting duty was up in less than a year, so we would be sent to a new duty station.
For you convenience, the Army gives you about 6 months notice before you move, to incluse your dates and places.
So. With recruiting duty set to be over in August of 2008, we expected new orders sometime in February. And lo and behold, we actually got them. Unofficially. We were going to Fort Irwin in California. Smack dab in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Or as I like to call it, “Nowhere”.
Briefly.
Less than 2 months later, those orders were changed. Since The Powers That Be decided B Daddy had been on vacation for the last 2 years. Obviously, The Powers That Be had never been on recruiting duty. Vacation my ass!
Enter new orders again. And again, unofficially. This time to Fort Bliss in Texas. Unwilling to believe I was going to be leaving my mountains and color and smog free life for a chance to reside in “Hell Paso”, I went in to denial mode.
There weren’t real orders. We didn’t have them, in paper, in our hands yet. So I made no plans. Time rolled on. Life kept moving. And our end date for recruiting got closer and closer.
Still, no orders.
Do we schedule movers? Do we get on the housing list at Bliss? Do we start looking for new care for the Colonel? Do we prepare for another tax season in Colorado? Do we throw a 5th going away party? Do we light fireworks in the desert one last time with the Roses?
What do we do next?
We wait some more.
And then finally, in August, the month we are supposed to me leaving, we get orders.
We arrive at Fort Bliss, settle in and begin to wonder what comes next. Deployment. And next? And after that? And then?
We always wonder what life will bring. With the Army, I just wonder what next week will bring. One thing is sure, whatever it will bring, it will change at least three times before next week.
Almost.
I have been in a very dark place lately. Not because of anything that anyone has done or not done. It is in my head.
And it can’t get out.
I have dealt with depression most of my life, and have pretty much just sucked it up. It made some of my life a living hell. After years of dealing with it on my own, and not very well, I finally got help in the form of therapy and drugs.
The darkness has never gone away completely, but had been reduced to a shadow, as opposed to the eclipse it had been.
Admitting that I had been living in an emotional eclipse was hard for me. Although I am just shy of 40, depression was something that was considered a flaw. It meant there was something wrong with me. I was, in some way, a failure.
Or so I thought. So I hid it. Hell, I just hid period.
And the darkness grew. And I was suffocating. I felt like I was drowning inside my own head. I began to panic over nothing. Cry over everything. Care about little.
I went to the doctor because I scared. I thought I was literally losing ground in my head. I wasn’t hearing voices. It was nothing like that. I just wanted out of the darkness.
The doctor, and the drugs, helped me find light. There was no aspect of my life that didn’t improve. I felt better physically. I was emotionally light hearted. I enjoyed life again.
And out of the blue, years later, the darkness came back.
But this time, it manifested itself in ways that affected not just me.
It came out in petty ways. Jealousy is not an emotion I am very familiar with. But lately, I have to remind myself, demand of myself that I not be jealous.
As a recovering anorexic, I have always been overly self critical. But never this brutally. My self worth became non existent. I was convinced my friends were trying to avoid me. I became convinced that my husband regretted marrying me. I began to drown in self pity. My pity parties were like the Roaring 40’s.
My self pity got incredibly intense. While I never truly contemplated suicide, it crossed my mind. I wanted out of the darkness. Then I realized how many people counted on me to do things and be there. And believe it or not, I got angry. Not at myself, but at the people who were counting on me. I became self absorbed and selfish. And full circle, I was back at self pity.
I scared my friend. I worried my husband. I terrified myself.
My friend was harsh. My husband was harsher. I was harshest.
My friend loves me. My husband loves me. I love me. All of these must be true, because otherwise, the harshness would not have been necessary.
The darkness is still there. But the stars are out. Little pin points of light. I am not Little Orphan Annie. The sun will not be out tomorrow.
But there is a 40% chance of sun.
And that is pretty damn good.
What better way to continue this series than with ME?
But not in the way you think.
One of the hardest things I have discovered since becoming an Army wife is trying to keep my identity. I mean I still am who I am, but I also am not.
At least not to the Army. To the Army, I am CPL Bocker’s wife. If I need to make an appointment with the doctor, my medical records are under B Daddy’s social security number. If I want to to talk to housing (or perhaps rant and rave at them), I have to show a power of attorney. If I call on post, they ask if I am the servicemember, or just the dependant. Really?
I even have to behave myself, because if I get in trouble, I can’t even get in my own trouble. It goes on B Daddy’s military record. He even gets credit for my shenanigans. That is total horsepuckey! Yes, I said horsepuckey. Blame my mother.
I am no longer just me. I am B Daddy’s dependant. It is as if I no longer exist on my own.
I love B Daddy. But why can’t I just be a person? Instead of just a person. I love being B Daddy’s wife. But must I be just CPL Bocker’s wife?
My name is Cassandra Lynn. It says it on my birth certificate. It doesn’t say Just Cassandra Lynn.
I struggle to keep a balance between being the spouse, the dependant and between still being me. By the way, I will let you know if I ever figure out how to do it.
In the meantime, I keep my job, I keep my BFF and hope for the best.
Is there ever a time that we do? I mean mentally.
I wonder if there will ever be a point in my life that I am not petty. Irrational. Jealous. Stupid.
Because I know that it is a selfish response. And it can hurt others, even if that is not the intention.
Since I moved away from Grand Junction, my home of 18 years, I have discovered that I am experiencing these feelings more and more often. Not because I enjoy them. It is the opposite. They make me not like myself.
It doesn’t matter that I try to keep it to myself, because I still know I am feeling that way. And the more I keep it to myself, the worse it seems to sound when it comes burbling to the surface.
The feelings always emerge about really dumb stuff. I left behind a lot of people. Some of them were very close and special to me. Yet that irrational part of me keeps thinking that time should stand still without me. They should not make new friends. They should not do things without me that we used to do together. In effect, they should not enjoy life without my wit and wisdom.
Not very realistic, I know. What makes it even more unrealistic is that I was the other friend. The new friend.
So how do I get past it?
As I have said before, I am as strong as I never was. I am perfectly imperfect. I am logically illogical. And now I am learning that I am selfishly unselfish on top of it all.
Super suck.
I want to be Wonder Woman. Without the invisible plane and bullet deflecting bracelets. OK, so I do want the bracelets. I want to be Mother Theresa. But with sex. I want to be human without acting human. I want my life to progress without actually changing. I want to have gorgeously shaped eyebrows without actually waxing them.
In other words, I want to be unrealistically realistic.
Learning. It starts at birth. And as much as we like to think we know everything at age 16, we keep learning until we die. We learn everyday. From everyone. Sometimes we learn good stuff. Sometimes we learn stuff we should have forgotten 10 minutes ago.
Live and learn, right?
One of the first things we learn (and forget) is how to share.
The Loverlies is a group of ladies who met on a message board. Their common denominator is they all have babies that were born in January, 2007. They became friends online, and then in ‘real life’. They chat, they have their private board and they meet up once a year for good times.
I am not a Loverlie. My BFF Rach is.
Being an Army wife means moving. A lot. So it can wreak havoc on making friends. So when you do, it is usually a fast, frenzied friendship. You bond in ways that most people can’t fathom.
Rach and I only met in 2007. By early 2008, I could not imagine a closer friend. By late 2008, I was gone. And yet, in less than a year, we knew more about each other, and are more loyal to each other than I ever would have expected. Our families merged. Short of hubby swapping, we share everything. Like I have mentioned before, who else but a true BFF would remain a BFF after all but throwing said BFF down the stairs?
The other side of Army wife friendships is learning to trust your friendships. I moved to Fort Bliss in November of 2008. I met new people. And back in Grand Junction, Rach had new friends. Both of us had petty ‘That is MY friend, back OFF!’ moments. I was jealous. She was cheating on me with other hookers! But being the person I am, I never said anything. I simply stewed. Little did I know, Rach was doing the same thing.
You are wondering what the Loverlies have to do with this?
Each year, Rach leaves to go have Happy Hooker time with them. And not me. For a long time, I yearned to be invited. I wanted to have girl time, away from kids and husbands too!
And then I didn’t.
Not because my friendship was faltering. Not because I loved my bestest hooker any less. But because I loved her more.
I have learned that the only friends you want any control of are the ones that you can’t control anyway. The ones that truly count, you don’t need to be with 24/7. You want to be, you can be, but you don’t need to be.
Everyone needs Loverlies. People that you get away to. That you share a bond with. My BFF and I share a lot. Close to everything. But if one person fulfilled all corners of our life, we would never leave the house. I no longer yearn to be a Loverlie. Instead, I look forward to the blackmail photos that inevitably come after each gathering.
B Daddy is my husband. I couldn’t do this without him. OK, so I wouldn’t be doing this without him. Rach is my BFF. And finally I have learned that I can do this without her. Because I know that when I need her, she is there. Hooker boots and all.
Being an Army wife has taught me how to share. Imagine that.
