The responsibility to appropriately represent (a) character(s)

What I am trying to tell you is this: in my own way, I love you. And you can trust me, mostly. I won't lead, wouldn't lead, haven't led you wrong. It would be bad form. But please know that if I do lead you wrong, I once thought it was right.

- Monson, Neck Deep, Appendix

I used to think that what I wanted was to be like you (or the many of you who are military wives). But really, I was an artist first and "they" say, "be true to yourself." I am a left-winged liberal. I don't believe in war. I would lend my crossed legs to a cause in need of silent protest. I try only to buy organic produce. There isn't much of me that fits the bill anyway. And there is the almost palpable barrier--a man in crisis. I don't think he reads this garbage anymore, so I am feeling a little less censored. That isn't even half of it. Maybe he thinks that The Lonely Sound was abandoned or he doesn't care anymore. In his own way, he loves me.

In my own way, I love you.

Lately I imagine the trajectory of a bullet. I imagine the spatter patterns it might cause on a wall or some other wayward surface. Brain matter, other parts. It doesn't matter. I play out the motions only in my head, and I'm only telling this because I'm tired of pussyfooting around the idea of self. I don't care if you like me. I should never have cared. And the truth, if there is such a thing, is that it may not be in the cards for me to "be" one of "you" army wives. Because life is a force to be reckoned with. It will happen according to or not at all resembling the outcome I reach for. We are born alone. We die alone. I write alone. I am beginning to believe that he wants to be alone, a man as Island.

(I am trying to disassociate myself.)

I am beginning to dream of the Anywhere I could move, the Anything I could do, all the dreams and ideals that dreamers and idealists conjure. I was, after all, an artist first, and then somehow his and somehow this.

I thought for the first time tonight that I could be okay married to creativity, the lonesome but not lonely eccentric. I thought that I could move in a couple of months for him, indulging the have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too element of whatever the fuck is going on here, but I won't. I need more satisfaction than that. I don't think I was ever meant to be the understudy, the shadow lurker. Some hours do belong solely to me.

And maybe I am the "married" type, and he is the one who isn't. Well, there isn't anything I can do to change him.

There isn't anything I can do to change him...but I was always honest. I always aimed for the LONG TERM.

Perhaps though, it's me? I always run. I'm kind of preparing to run now, peeling back the layers of happy-family-visions and the imagined faces of our unborn children, a fusion of more than individuals.

I feel like I am losing and because I don't care about winning per se (and he does), I think I am more privy to, or likely to examine the behavior of dissolution. We are fuzzy at the edges.

I am trying to read Brenda Miller's Season of the Body but it is proving difficult. Her focus is on the end of a relationship with Keith, who also makes an appearance in Blessing of the Animals in a beautiful essay called "A Different Person." It is so painful to imagine us parting ways. So unbelievably painful. I have harnessed so much in this Man, this ourness of life, a river fed by us as tributaries. And now what?

I am my own captain. (though not quoted, per request.)

I am not challenging the "who" manning the wheel. I am sure as shit my own captain.

Hold yourself together.

(punish someone else.)

I am not wishing to be an anchoress. I am not counting on anything. I am remembering learning to swim--no metaphor--at the Bambi Motel, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. If this is pride, then sometimes I too am amazed my soul stays in my body.

- Mary Ann Samyn, "From The Little Book of Female Mystics"

So much has happened, continues to happen, here. I had forgotten that a heart could hurt and love equally and at the same time, or maybe I just think I ever knew. And this is only proof of some personal evolution. I don't really care what it is or why it is or why it lingers here, or how much worse it might be without prayer flags and meditations. I just want it to leave, to do its work and leave us better off.

As for the things I haven't been able to say for myself, to myself, a blitz of second hand positivity may save me. Someone unexpected told me to envision the things that I want from this life, to be who I am, and also that I'm right to want this huge thing that now feels impossible--a light among darkness.

And in the meantime, I am working to loosen my grip just so the knuckles find their color again, just so my feet become mobile. I am trying not to count on anything.

universal truth

Sometimes I feel the great weight of this whole thing--being apart, knowing it isn't the last time, and knowing I still have to perform, [all] at once.

Mine is an act of blind compulsion. At 7am the squealing pulse of my cell phone goes off. I have nowhere to be, most likely, but anything later than that hour feels wasteful and lazy. I sit up in bed bed, fumbling for my glasses and make my way to the bathroom. Everything following this routine is the result of the necessity to hurl myself toward darkness, another day's end. If I don't think about the "great weight" or if I simply move forward faster than I think it can keep up, or if I tell myself that the inconvenience is almost over, not a pattern in the cycle that will soon form our life together, then the hours feel normal, like my friends', like the lives of conventional people.

No one spells out the phases of separation. No one has so kindly written What to Expect When You're Expecting Him to Return. Maybe I wouldn't have liked knowing that the last weeks would split my personality into multiples, none of which perform independently. Instead they vie for the spotlight hungrily, without reservation. I am angry and broken hearted and giddy with excitement, and overflowing-happy, while tears pool in dark spots on my clothes and vainly shouted curses ricochet from wall to wall, unheard. I have embraced the control that lies in day-long check lists and home projects and rendezvous with friends that have become my family. There are time-spots left open for washing dishes and ceremonies put into play for scrubbing sinks and the tub. This autonomy makes sense, this is what had to happen.

Now I am asked to hang in waiting for a coded word, then the next one and the next until he finally steps from the magic vessel that will bring him home. I'm no good for these terms, and what about after, when my lists are disrupted and my support group is pushed into second place, and the Army has control again of more than just an arrival date. How does the switch flip smoothly? How is it possibly fair to be expected to bounce from one existence to the other without suffering an inevitable and utter breakdown?

a dream is a wish your heart makes

She stands to my right and I imagine her name to be something more usual than mine. If we had anything else in common it would be too much for me to remain composed. I am at the airport at an inopportune time waiting for my friend whose soldier also isn't coming home tonight. Everyone else, it seems, is eager to greet a pending commercial flight carrying long missed troops of an unknown kind. What matters is that not one of them is mine. I watch selectively for the familiar face I will soon be greeting, for the same glassy tired facade I know too well, and I try to look past the positively giddy expressions of the others, and the girl who I now know is waiting for a man named Cory.

She is approximately my age with brunette curls tossed carelessly into a ponytail, plain glasses, and an oversized t-shirt creased down the middle by dog tags that have likely kept vigil in his absence. She chatters to another woman, who is also waiting, about restaurant reservations and other modes of anticipatory busy work. It is all I can to do cross my legs tighter and more awkwardly and to chew at already brittle nails and to hope that the New Orleans flight empties before the onslaught occurs of unbearable reunions. Quietly, I wish the Dallas plane would turn around and fly back to whatever Middle Eastern country it originated from, just for the amount of time remaining before my soldier returns. Or I wish that I were in her place, feeling the same surge of mad tingling throughout every atom of the body in those too-long moments before the countdown ends. Relief is a thing I have long put out of heart and mind, and Denial is the vein in which I mostly reside--maintaining a cycle of remembering and forgetting him so I'm not always acutely aware of how painful it is to love and miss a man so intensely.

If I were a bigger, less selfish person I would find it in me to be happy for her and proud even, that she and I are a part of the same parallel universe. Instead, she makes me angry, and with envy and malice I want her suffering to continue, for The Staff Sergeant to be the one instructed to sprint from the Dallas plane door to my arms, even though I know that she has earned this homecoming through the endurance of millions of seconds passing like pinpricks, stinging reminders that life fragmented must somehow move forward as though it were whole.

By the time I've begun nervously gnawing the inside of my cheek, I happen to spot the top of my friend's head, bobbing beneath florescent lights in the flow of travelers. Before she sees me, she calls my phone (always held close) and I urge her to hurry because of what's coming. Without missing a beat, we join paces, step onto the escalator in synch, and crinkle our faces almost together in the funny looking but effective way that dams up the woe of this war thing. She hasn't been here since January, since the two of our soldiers left for the desert. More than anything, I think, she wants her fiance to take my place, to be the first hug after her flight. But nothing is normal anymore--for her, it's this welcome and pulling into the driveway of his house without him being home. For me, it's the stranger living the role I crave to land, the seething joy of enthusiasm weaving through each of her uninvited explanations of directions she has given her Cory or tasks she has carried out in preparation for the soon coming infallible instant, first of locked eyes, then a hug, a kiss, and the way her body will shudder from the shoulders down in a sigh of long-overdue relief.

13 of 31: giving (confession)

I've heard that it takes about twelve weeks before this starts to feel normal.  I'm not quite there so I can't vouch for the resolution that is said to bloom after three months of struggling to find a balance.  What I do know is that it hasn't come soon, in fact I have done a fair share of backsliding, which leads me to believe that I am progressing, though I can't determine if I've moved from denial to anger or depression in the grief process.  There are no moments that I can recall bargaining for anything so I'm led to think that this is anger.  I feel like I don't know him in pictures, that we might as well be filler models used to show how perfectly other couples' smiles might fit within the frames.

I really wouldn't write any of this if I wasn't supposed to write something daily.  As it turns out, March is full of cynicism and will accurately be remembered as such.  One of my friends recently explained to me that she would like to run away from her life.  I asked her to share her destination because I would happily pack my bags to join her.  I need a manual (written by a human being) on how to do this.  I feel like I'm failing us by not being strong enough, yet I don't know how to be anything other than this.  

Tune in for April, maybe I'll edge toward acceptance next month.  

12 of 31: (too early to be) giving

Somewhere the sun is brewing it's coffee and for reasons unknown to me I am already awake, wide awake despite the screaming headache that sent me to bed early or the melatonin supplement I took before I buried my face into a pile of pillows meant to simulate the shape of him next to me.  It's freezing in my house as Winter simply will not give up its reign - 38 degree highs, possible snow.  Give me a break.

Perhaps it was the chill that stirred me from restless sleep, except that on one side of me was my dog and huddled against my other leg was my tabby cat, not to mention the oversized hoodie I'm still wearing, stolen from The Staff Sergeant's closet.  

Before pushing back the covers I laid still, trying to recall the last time I had gotten up before sunrise.  It was prior to his leaving, all those mornings of PT, incessant snoozing of his cell phone alarm in the darkness, a reason to pull in closer to him, just a few more minutes.  It was the first memory in at least a week that I didn't snarl at or hold at arm's length.  I let myself feel it, the up and down of his chest, how warm his body would be beneath the covers, the way he would eventually ease away from my arms, trying not to wake me up as he headed for his closet or a shower, his first-thing kiss meant to be so weightless that I wouldn't really notice, not until the one before he left for the day.   

I know better than to fight these circumstances; losing is inevitable.  The army will always win.  Similarly, my emotions will always trump an attempt to hold them down for the sake of looking the part.  I miss him like crazy, some days so much that I don't know what to do with myself.  And I assure you that there are things he is perfectly capable of and willing to do to help make this easier for me.  It's just a matter of having enough time on the phone to work it out, and maybe not being disconnected next time.

6 of 31: giving (proof)

Here it is folks - signs that Winter is losing the fight!  And not a moment too soon:

This post is the last thing on my list before loading the car and getting the hell out of Dodge.  I need the break.  I need the distraction as I am fending off tears right now while I write these words.  I'm feeling very...I don't know, unfulfilled in the moment.  I can't help wanting more than is rationed for today, for this week, for Us.  And what better way to avoid the reality of dealing with it than to escape?

What's that behind you?  

[I'm slipping out the door while your head is turned.]

2 of 31: giving (in)

What I really meant to say had nothing to do with weather, storms of any genre, except maybe this one back home that has yet to pass [figuratively]. But because I have some dignity, although unapparent to the naked eye, I asked about it there to keep from crying. The bare essence of pride, that that's left, kept me from demanding a verbal shrine, a garrulous flow of all the reasons and ways that you love me, something completely selfish and over-indulgent, concentrated like last season's apple butter or the jar of marshmallow cream for s'mores that arrived a few days ago.

It's more desperate than the boxes can conceive or deliver, right now but not always.

Despite claims of pride, or fraying threads of pride and strength and normalcy, I really meant to free the contents of myself this morning, not that unraveling on the phone would make any one of the circumstances change shape or even appear to. I would still like the luxury of not caring, the freedom of a child to wail full-force, head thrown back, the rest of me limp in surrender just because it is sometimes too much to house this sadness within my body.

And also...

Deployment, go to hell.

on the menu: a small serving of self-pity.

Maybe it's the rain, the perpetual, unending Winter, or maybe it's just the truth - the absence of anything fair at all in love and war.  I can't look at his pictures because suddenly it isn't ok to remember him in any dimension.  His face smiling, laughing, caught off guard unseals the vault that keeps him distant.  Remembering feels too sweet, too rich to continue tasting.  

The photos remind me that he's real, that this is all really happening, that I can't touch him or talk to him when I need it, on my time.  They remind me that there were and will be times much better than this, but that this isn't one of them.  This time is for making debts.  

I'm not sure why for five weeks this was easy and that now it isn't, not this week anyway.  I don't want to be strong today.  I want him to be here, to justify the photos that hold our place, for him to be strong enough for the both of us so that I can take a 10 minute break.  I would like for him to walk up behind me, wrap one arm around my waist, pull the hair away from my neck with the other hand and kiss my skin, or at least to be able to imagine it without the bottomless ache.  

What was I thinking?

Tomorrow morning I have to teach two English 1020 classes before noon.  Tomorrow morning may be a two-cup coffee day.  Come to think of it, tomorrow morning may be ripe for a number of out of character activities, such as: vomiting in my new purse, actually forgetting my name, crying in front of two classes of college freshman/sophomores, getting drunk before 9am, actually forgetting coherent language, totally forgetting the way that "Young Goodman Brown," "Boys and Girls," "The Lost World," "Araby," and Erdrich's character, Lipsha all share the commonality of innocence lost to experience.  

I'm just a teensy bit nervous about this endeavor.  I keep imagining myself walking into the classroom and through some supernatural occurrence, they all know that I am horrifically under-qualified even to be supervising them for a period of 55 minutes.  It's a little like the dream where you're naked in pubic.  While I will surely remember to dress myself, what if they know I have no business being their temporary authority on American Literature?  This is only my second semester and I wasn't an English major.  I am the epitome of "fish out of water."  My second dreaded scenario is that they all have I.Q.'s infinitely higher than mine so that when they ask me questions, I have no. idea. how. to. answer.

Back to the lesson plan.

underneath the covers

Sometimes I truly feel like I'll never find my place in the Army lifestyle.  If I were paid per avoided confrontation I could drop all of this business of higher education.  I am not a conservative republican.  I am not a conservative...anything.  I am not religious in the Christian sense or in any other conventional sense.  I just don't fit those molds and I really, really, really hate it when someone advertises their belief/moral/value system by talking shit about "the others."  

When I think of the "democratic mindset," I think "tolerance."  I think of humanity and equality and advocating for people who deserve better.  It's difficult for me to respect a person who tells me that they know the difference between political supporters and have all their life, hence their staunch alignment with [fill in the blank]-ism.  What that speaks to me is close-minded-ism, in flashing neon language.  

While my blood pressure rises and my ability to sit at the table, composed, begins to lessen, I smile so as not to upset the dynamic of a situation.  I don't have a problem with the little foundational stone of free thought or free speech for that matter, it's when you, who knows nothing about me begins to explain how my entire ethical make-up is skewed.  I don't wage war on those who are different from me on the sole basis of difference, in fact, The Staff Sergeant himself is rooted in an opposing thought process.  But it burns me up when your self aggrandized notions are compelled to leap above such a simple and humble element as respect.  

What I don't understand is how you don't get that.  Despite the refuse of the last eight years and the continual fracturing of The Church, I don't think I pass personal judgment so simply.  I don't think you're wrong for not voting the same way as me or for praying to God or whomever your prayers reach.  I just wish I could be myself without threatening you or causing a heated debate over coffee.  I wish that I didn't feel the need to mask the pieces that make me because good people come in all flavors.  There is no need for immediate divisions, we're all left behind, we're all directly attached to war whether or not we agree with it, whether or not we reach upward or outward with our minds or politics or scriptures.  Life is very, very gray for you to have painted your vision of it so black and so white.  

you know all the rules by now

I'll preface the following with this character flaw: I can be a little neurotic.  

I missed Thursday's call and then Friday's.  I blogged that already.  

I was crossing the street when I noticed the second one and I thought, though just for a fleeting second, about stopping mid-stride.  To say that I was angry with myself would be an understatement.  Both prompted minor episodes of...[cough]...graceful disappointment but life went on.  I kept the phone close all day Saturday and Sunday but by Sunday night I could no longer stave off the throes of absolute hysterics.  

I struggle with the lack of control that this deployment seems to yield.  Two missed calls back-to-back is one thing.  Worrying that he might think it was intentional is another.  After four days of furious festering, all I could think about was the probability that he had concluded I no longer loved him.  In retrospect I can acknowledge the level of ridicule that this deserves, however in the moment it was reasonable fuel for a kind of discord that unhinged me.  I couldn't tell him that I was punishing myself for the simple error of a silenced phone.  I couldn't tell him that he had done nothing but make this easier for me, that I love him to pieces, that I was sorry.  I couldn't do anything more than watch for a tiny screen to light up, "unknown."

This morning I finally got to talk to him.  My mouth opened and apologies gushed like dammed water released -  

IloveyouandI'msosorryandpleasedon'tthinkIwouldignoreyouonpurpose

[breath]

I don't think I could be too angry to want to hear your voice.  Please don't think I don't love you.

I think he phrased it as, "jumping to extreme conclusions," and I'm pretty sure he said so laughing.  After all he knows me and how I let the cynical committee of judges in my head take over sometimes.  He assured that he never once entertained any one of the crazy things that I had assumed and that he had never questioned how much he is loved.  

After our conversation, I was too relieved to feel as embarrassed as I should have.  He is the Reason and Strength in this couple.  I grip tightly and sink in my heels, all the while hoping for just enough prowess to portray a state of sanity.  

bad karma?

I missed another call.  

I can't even talk about it...

I'm going to the gym...

Because if I write it, I'll feel held accountable.

Because I've forgotten that I live in the body of a 25 year old adult, not a 5 year old calorie-burning-inferno.

Because The Staff Sergeant keeps asking about those lofty plans I had to get in shape while he was gone.

Because he's in the gym daily and I don't want him to come home flaunting it and find that I am left with no counter argument.  

Because of today's Nutella, Starburst Gummies, and heavy-on-the-chocolate chocolate milk.

Because I can't kick the blues...and working up a sweat is supposed to help.

Home-sick

I wonder if it's just me that ever feels this kind of weightlessness, like tugging on strings that never pull tight--just small.  Tonight I think that I could jump up and down and shout without acknowledgement from the universe.  And really this is just about realizing how little control I can possibly have at all.  

I'm not sure to what I should attribute this existential panic.  Maybe realizing that he will always leave as long as he does this.  Or perhaps it came when I concluded that the emails I send him don't really get checked, and I can't call and that makes me feel completely...powerless.  It could be a number of other things, really, but those are the likely culprits this time around*.  

Everything here is a little off balance.  I like to think that I've mastered this, that I am exempt from any more rough days and that the short calls I do get are perfectly enough.  When I overlook the telling symptoms that a hard night is coming, I not only feel the initial want for him, but am then also angered for being caught off guard.  This is another one of those nights.  I can be found planted on my sofa in sweats, dwelling on the stories he doesn't get to hear.  Those that he does are abridged or outlined with lost punch lines and a diminishing presence of laughter.  They feel boiled down to hurried transactions, and knowing that he doesn't read the heartfelt emails only adds to my overall sense of impotence.  I am pretty much an ineffective little thread in this great, grand scheme and I hate that.  He can call me, but I cannot reach him even through methods that should.  I am cookies and quickly penned notes with smiley faces, minor and inessential.

-------------------------------------------------------

*this panic surrounding things I cannot control is my usual disposition 

Relief

My title photo seems quite out of place since our serious Winter broke today after a week.  While I appreciate the season and I like the crispness, the clean sensation of cold air, and our occasional snow, I was kind of glad to hear the birds chirping and to feel a warm preview of Spring.  Also, the sooner Winter subsides, the sooner he'll be home.

I've made it almost two weeks.  I'd be lying if I didn't own up to some pretty wretched days, some horrifying moods, and supplements to help me sleep.  And honestly there was at least one full day I wasn't sure I could do this.  My dad always tells me that the darkest hour is before daybreak and here it's certainly applicable.  There is a full range of uncontrollable emotions that go hand in hand with sending the man who holds your heart off to war.  The one I'm most ashamed of is that particular episode of anger.  Anger that he's gone, that he left me, anger at the universe for fating me to this position, anger at myself for blaming him.  It isn't like that and I know it.  This isn't something he did to me, however the knowing better only amplifies inevitable feelings of guilt.  The Staff Sergeant is a good man, the best, and I know how very lucky I am to so proudly stand by him (most of the time).  Then daybreak--and I awoke a new woman, the fever had gone and I felt like myself again.  

No one ever says that this life is full of ease and rose gardens, but somehow abandoning it is impossible.  I've hurled myself into a care packaging oblivion.  Every time I feel like crying I start planning the next one.  I've gotten back into school and am getting ready to start a new job.  All of that and I'm slowly chipping this new house into some semblance of order.  Tonight I hung my closet bar for all of the clothes I have that wouldn't fit into the tiny crevices this house deemed closet space.  I was so motivated by that small victory that I sorted the storage room and put together my new desk chair.  Now I'm sitting for the first time at my study space and not a moment too soon.  A magenta glow falls over the old tin table top I'm using as my work surface.  I have a victory cocktail to the right of my laptop and soon I'll go fish out a good photo of my courageous soldier to put in the corner. 

Moments like this let me peek from beneath the layers of Overwhelming just long enough to see the light.  I can do this thing that challenges me, this living on my own, this new town and old house of Murphy's law.  I can wait, be patient, be okay while he's away because he's doing the same thing for me.  

I feel like the mess of the new house, completely un-unpacked with warped floors. Sometimes the harshly misaligned door frames and dips and crests of deep, blue carpet make that place feel disorienting, like living inside a fun house. I, too, appear normal from the curb and unaffected by shifting and compacting ground. But on the inside, my mind must be reshaping with these changes, buckling and bending like the old hard wood in the dining room.

Next week I'll get to the unlabeled boxes scattered among the cavities of my house, slice through the packing tape that was found only in time to seal some. And maybe I'll measure the windows, finally, to hang curtains instead of fitted sheets from finishing nails hammered into old plaster with the heel of a patten flat. I'll move furniture into sensible groupings where they aid in the fluid movement of my traffic patterns [only], and I will stack my books against each other, cozy in the arms of bookshelves, plates in kitschy strawberry cabinets. All the while, the floors will flex and sag still, like they have for years and years and years, and my heart will ache like the contoured bones of my house the first time the earth settled beneath its foundation.

The good news is that it still stands. While its doors have been shaved into angled forms and most of my furniture is poised on three legs, there is still a house that has seen the whole world evolve into something quite different than it was. I don't feel nearly as strong as the boards that built it or the hard plaster that encased it, though. I don't feel as strong as everyone tells me I have to be. I don't feel strong at all, really.

Winter Song

on to something new [ready or not]

I have so much to say and so little energy and liberty to etch it all across this screen.  Christmas left something to be desired, new year's eve, however was perfect -- more perfect than perfect.  This life has a way of letting one glaze every moment with high-gloss hyper-perfection, given the right timing and circumstance.  Each breath and smile is caught and archived, pinned like fragile specimens behind glassy walls, slow motion memories with over-pronounced dialogue and historical inaccuracy.  

I err most often on optimism -- foolish, really.  I imagine the still frames more richly colored, sugary and scripted.  For example, I omit certain attempts at death-by-Dorito-consumption and possible engagement rings (on my mother's finger), large life-engulfing trunks, drunken welcome-homes, all consuming guilt, the kind of "good bye" that truly has the power to grind one's heart to dust.  I have added brightly adorned Christmas trees, comfort and relaxation, smiles, security.  Next year will be just long enough for my mind to fully buy into all of those forged memories and I will probably be surprised when it plays out just the same.