This
Star & Stripes letter, written by a military spouse from Fort Hood, TX whose husband is deployed to Iraq, is in the form of an editorial, so I will post only a portion of it.
Spouses of deploying soldiers haven't received much attention in the media. Americans typically don't give a second thought to sending soldiers off on multiple year long or longer deployments, so have no idea what the family left behind goes through. Below is a description of what life is like for them and is a must read for those civilians who dismiss deployments as simply the fault of those who signed on the dotted line.
`Normal' is relative with spouse at war
By Erin Allison
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We are the families that wait at home. We are the wives who lose our husbands, not to mortar fire or improvised explosive devices, but to depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or divorce. We have a story all our own that no news camera could truly portray. Though we sit at home writing, blogging, talking, it is only to our peers. The rest of the world just can't understand how it feels.
They leave us before the deployment. His counselor says it's his "defense mechanism." And I cry, "Well, what about us?"
Then I'm the selfish one. I'm not the one who will be living in the desert, away from creature comforts and watching death all around me. I'm not the one who will go for days without sleep, live on Meals, Ready to Eat during long recon exercises, and endure war. I'm not the one who will suffer like that.
"But what about us?"
I will spend every day hoping that today he will be able to get to a phone, because I miss the sound of his voice. I will avoid the news for fear that I'll hear his unit mentioned in a piece about a particularly violent attack. I will toss and turn at night, and awaken to any little sound because with the time difference it could be him trying to reach me on instant messenger. I will be unable to listen to certain songs on the radio without crying. There will be emptiness in my home day in and day out, as I try to fill it with anything that will let me just smile and laugh for a minute and forget that my heart is hurting.
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