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Here I am 5 years into the macabre merry-go-round that has become my life since Sept. 11, 2001; here I sit, while my husband is deeply immersed in training to yet again head into the sand box and out of our lives, for the fourth time. When I am asked about my experience as a military wife in these times I often say I feel as if my life has been placed on pause. As if some finger from the netherworld has reached up out of the abyss and with a simple gesture has placed everything I thought I knew off kilter, and frozen the life I had planned to have in time.

In times like this, humor seems to be the only thing that saves one's sanity. I often joke that my mantra is "Stop my life. I want to get off." I still believe it would make a great t-shirt. Of course, the 90% of the population who have no direct tie to the War wouldn't get it. But that's ok, I don't get them either.
At work I listen to people bemoan their fate because their husband has to go away on business for a week. I drive down streets filled with houses of people living the American Dream; brought to you by my family's miserywondering. Will we ever be able to afford what these people take for granted?
I joke that I have declared myself an atheist because of the war. At this point, I don't know what is worse. Not believing in a god; to give me some grain of hope in the dark. Or believing there is a god that sits by and watches my children go without their father for another 12 or 18 mos. I don't have the stomach to believe the latter any more. I used to believe in Karma. But if it exists, I must have been a serial killer in my last life to deserve this. I have become the extreme pessimist. War does that.
People often write about PTSD. I think there should be a grant to study the effects of repeat deployments on those of us left behind. I think I have my own PTSD. When he is gone the worst part is the waiting. It can be weeks when I don't hear from him. At my work, a colleague's wife and child call him multiple times a day to "talk". Everyone at my work remarks of what a wonderful father he is. To me it wreaks of co-dependence. But then again, I'm bitter.
What they don't tell you is that even when our husbands are home, their families have to be an after thought. They train incessantly for war and rightly so. I'd rather I never saw him again until this nightmare ended; then he or the men he leads not be trained enough. It's that sense of self sacrifice that idealizes the soldier's wife. Strong. Proud.

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