Redeployment, oh, the joy it is. But wait. They forgot to mention the uncertainty, the insecurity, the weirdness, the awkwardness, the relief then the unknowing of who I will be bring back into my house. They forgot to tell me that it would feel like this. Sure, they said to take our time, and that we have both changed but this is a bit more than that.
All of a sudden there are bags everywhere, and a strange man wandering around my house, leaving underwear on the floor, using my bathroom, and messing with my kids. He isn’t the man that I sent to war. He isn’t the man I thought that I would get back from war. That man died the moment I said “Just come home to me” again, and again, and again.
Am I supposed to share my bed with this stranger that I love?
He jumps at balloons, and he drives while scanning the side of the road. He jumps if I am a little to quite entering the room, and he is always looking at the death tolls. I walk on eggshell, and I am not sure what to say. I love him, whoever he is now.
I don’t know where he fits. I have been doing things on my own for so long. He doesn’t know where he fits either. The kids want him so much, but I can see that he doesn’t know what to do with them.
Is this my fault?
Is this his fault?
I don’t know how to put my walls down, to let him in. He is just going to leave me again and maybe for good the next time. I don’t know how to turn him on anymore, how do we get that back?
Re-deployment is hard, and it can be different each time. I struggle with the readjustment of having him home, as he struggles with being home. He hasn’t had a time to readjust to a non-combat way of thinking. He was in a war zone only a few days ago! He hasn’t had weeks on a boat to readjust to the idea of being in a place where his life is not in danger.
These and many more issues are always swarming around us with every re-deployment. I never know how long the uncertainty will last or if we will ever find “us” again. We struggle, but we struggle together. I have adjusted how we communicate through deployments and that seems to help. I don’t keep him sheltered from what I am experiencing at home, and he is sharing a little more each time with me about his experiences. This helps. I won’t allow him to exist on the outskirts of our family.
He has been back for just over a year, and we have been together for about 7 months of that time. We are doing OK, but we continue to encounter issues that are a direct result of these wars. I am not sure if we will ever be as we were (how could we?) But I am here. I am by his side, and I am waiting for a time where we can be us.
