DeployMEnt

Sometimes I wish I could get deployed somewhere.
Have to leave the house and leave everything behind for a period of time. Live out of a bag, wear the same thing every day, fulfill a mission. And then when it was time to come home, home would be waiting. Cleaned, fresh, ready for me to drop myself in its arms.
Sometimes I feel like I'm juggling too much. Sometimes it all feels like it's just too much to handle. And maybe it is. It probably is. You don't always hear the stories from the home-front. Unless you know a family in the service. There comes a point where the mundane is unbearable. The maintenance of "home" until they all return becomes...tiring. I feel spread too thin. Too stretched.
I love my husband. I love who he is, what he is doing, what he has done, and what he will someday do. I love that he is honorable and that I respect him more every day for so many reasons. I love my life with him; our house, our cats, our adventures. But...there's this point...and I have a nagging feeling that others have felt this point the same as I have...where you just need a break. Even if it's just from keeping up the home-front; keeping everything running until his or her return. Do you ever wish you could be the one deployed for once so that home could be waiting for you when you returned? So that you could get a piece of the action instead of feeling pointless and in an eternal state of waiting? So that you could have the upper-hand when it came to when phone calls were made, when communication took place? So you could fulfill a mission instead of feeling left behind without any of the glory?
I think that's the hardest part about him going away; the feeling of powerlessness and pointlessness. Being left behind like the fat kid who was never chosen for either baseball team. And I'm fully aware it's not something to take personally, like an attack on myself. And that's not how it's taken. But it is hard. A hard adjustment. A thick, dry pill to swallow.
I know that deployments are not all glory and action and excitement. They can be quite the opposite and often are. I guess I just wish I had something too...a direction to give me purpose while he's gone; a powerful reason for being other than the eternal "waiting" status.
Am I wrong to feel so? Some will probably think so and shun me for it. But I don't believe I'm alone in this yearning for something more. No, I don't think I am alone at all.

Photo: Bettmann found via Corbis Images