So Worn Out

I've gone through a string of emotional ups and downs during the past several days, and it's left me feeling wholly exhausted. I've been so useless at work today; I can't think straight anymore.

It's been a mix of excitement and depression, determination and helplessness.


All the thing we're going to do together when he gets back.
All the things I'm going to miss when he's gone.

Dammit, we're going to get through this no matter what.
I have no control over what's happening and I hate it.


I continue to swing back and forth.

On Saturday we went out with the boy's cousins for drinks and karaoke. They all got really drunk, but I only had a couple beers. I karaoke'd the shit out of Muse and MCR. It was pretty fun, but there was a heavy sense of this being the last hurrah.

One of the boy's cousins asked me if I was holding it together, and I answered honestly. No, I'm having a really hard time. He seemed half surprised. Maybe he expected me to lie to him. Oh yeah, I'm doing fine, everything's going great.

I'm not a good liar.

I babysat the boy's drunk ass until the wee hours, though I didn't hold it against him. That was the point, afterall, and I'm glad he had fun. But I felt pretty horrible on Sunday from lack of rest and continually overactive emotions.

There was a potluck on Sunday, a going away party for the boy, with 30+ members of his family for me to interact with, many of whom I was meeting for the first time. I was already tired going into it, and completely drained coming out.

Don't get me wrong, everyone was super nice, the food was tasty, and there were several adorable little kids and babies. But if I have to hear one more person ask about when the boy is leaving, what his training schedule is, how long he'll be gone, or wish him good luck...

*Gah*

I know people mean well, and I know they're asking because they're his family and they love him and they want him to be safe. All the same reasons why I want to know what's going on. But when you hear it 20 times in one day, it only serves to highlight the inevitable, and that's the last thing I want right now.

When we got home, we watched the movie Seven Pounds, which was a tear jerker that made us both cry. It deals a lot with grief and loss, things we're both feeling anyway. After it was over, we held onto each other and sobbed for what seemed like forever. I got wet makeup all over the boy's shirt sleeve and shoulder.

Then we climbed into bed together and cried some more. I finally turned out the light when I couldn't cry anymore.

I woke up still feeling heavy and stretched, unrested, mentally and emotionally drained. I've been that way all day long. I saw the boy at lunch, and he said he felt the same way all morning.

To add to our frustration, the boy can't get a straight answer from his commanding officers about his deployment schedule. He reports to the armory early on Thursday morning, but they don't fly out until Monday. So does he get to come home for the weekend? Nobody seems to know.

So I'm planning for Wednesday to be the last day I get to spend with him before he leaves, because I don't know what's happening after that.

He's supposed to come home again after one month of training, but I don't know what date or for how long. I've heard "a couple of days" but I don't know what that means exactly. If I knew, I could ask for time off work. But the best I could do was send my boss an email telling him that in about a month I might ask for a couple days off. It doesn't get much more vague than that.

I'm overwhelmed by everything right now. I hope I'm strong enough to make it through this. I know it will get better after he leaves for his second training, because once he's gone for that, he'll really be gone and there won't be all this waiting and wondering what the hell is happening. Then I can try to get myself into a routine and just plow through the days until he's home safe again. But until that happens, I think it's going to be kind of a mess. I just have to do the best I can.

I feel lucky that he values this time as much as I do, and he makes it a priority to spend time with me and include me in what he's doing. I'm so in love with him.

Here's a little photo from our drunk karaoke night. It makes me smile. :)



I can't wait for him to be home for good. He hasn't even left yet and I'm already counting down. Only 13-ish more months to go.

Down

I woke up this morning with a jumble of mixed feelings, and I've been teetering on the edge of a meltdown ever since.

My face feels warm and flushed. My body is heavy. My eyes well up and a few soppy tears escape before I choke it all back.

I just want to go home and curl up with my boy and maybe a couple of furry cats. I don't want to deal with anything today. I don't want to see anybody.

In one week, the boy will be gone.

It hit me really hard this morning, and I can't seem to let it go. I even sat through 2 hours of meetings where I was forced to be engaged and provide input. Usually that's enough distraction to get my mind off of whatever is bothering me, but not today.

Today I'm just a mess.

I have to get through the next 4 hours without completely losing it. Somehow. Maybe I'll go drown myself in chocolate. After that maybe I can zone out into some music. I'm not sure what else.

I wish I could sleep the day away and wake up in a better mood tomorrow. But I can't.

My face feels warm again. Can't let the tears escape this time, someone might see me. Need to hold it together.

What's it going to be like next week when he's actually gone?

I hate this.

Monkeys

Ever seen that commercial on TV where the guy is in a meeting with a room full of chimps, and he's trying to get them focused on the meeting topic but they're distracted by a laser pointer? Eventually it's total chaos, with the chimps throwing reams of paper and jumping up and down on the chairs and table. The guy gets fed up and makes a phone call to look for a new job.

"I can't stand it anymore. I work with a bunch of monkeys!"

Yeah...

Sometimes I think about that commercial when I'm at work. It's odd how a room full of well educated adult professionals can quickly turn a meeting into full blown monkey chaos. I don't completely understand the dynamics of it, but I wish there was a way to prevent it, or at least quickly nip it in the bud once it starts.

[sigh]

Wishful thinking.

I wonder if you could get away with firing someone for being stupid. Would it be considered wrongful termination?

"I'm sorry employee, but you're just not a good fit for the position or the company. You're too stupid."

Hmm... wishful thinking again.

Talk

So the answer to all of my questions and ponderings yesterday is YES.

Yes, being sick makes me more whiny than usual. Duh. I don't feel good.

Yes, me being whiny makes me extra sensitive to things that might annoy me.

Yes, the boy and I are both stressed out about him leaving so soon.

Yes, this all adds up to us both being more irritated with each other than usual.

The boy and I had a good talk last night, and I think we both understand each other a bit better now. A big chunk of our frustrations stem from this impending deadline. He is leaving, and it's coming up damn soon. It's been like the white elephant in the room. But I feel better now that we've talked about it, and I hope he does too.

Now our goal is to try talking through our frustrations when they arise, rather than just getting annoyed and giving up.

I hope we can make it through this.

I sure love him.

Illness Brings Out the Worst?

I don't know what it is, but I've been especially irritated with the boy for the last couple days. I'm trying to figure out if it's just because I'm sick, which makes me more sensitive and irritable than usual, or if there's something more to it than that. I'm pretty sure it's the former, but nonetheless, he's kinda driving me crazy!

I started getting sick on Friday. I left work early, and saw the boy for about 20 minutes before he left for drill. I spent Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday alone before before he came home Sunday night. I do just fine on my own, even when sick, but I still missed him terribly while he was gone.

Almost immediately after he came home, I was annoyed. He didn't seem to understand why the military movie bothered me so much. He joked too much even after I asked him to stop playing around with me. He went to rent movies even after I explained that when I'm sick I only want to watch movies I already own (weird quirk, I know). Then I had no place to go while he watched them. When I started playing Warcraft, he started playing X-Box... when my volume was too loud, rather than asking me to turn it down, he turned his up, starting a video game volume war. Then there were the guilt trip comments about sex, after I clearly explained that I'm just not turned on when my body is all achy.

It just went on and on, from Sunday night, through Monday, and even today when we met each other for lunch. We continue to antagonize each other for no good reason.

We don't have anything specific to fight about. To my knowledge, neither of us is angry about anything in particular. We didn't see each other all weekend, and our time last week was limited too, so it's not like we're spending too much time together. (Or are we?) I can't think of any reason why we've been so unusually intolerant of each other.

I keep trying to ask him to be nicer to me in various ways, because I know that when I'm sick, I have a tendency to take everything a little too personally. But he responds with more sarcasm. I feel like I can't win!

Then I wonder if we're both snappy because we know he's leaving in just over 2 weeks. April 2nd is the date. Is it possible that neither of us has figured out the right way to deal with this yet, so it comes off as defensive assholishness? (Yes, I made that up on the spot. I'm that good.)

I don't know... usually he talks about how he would take such good care of me when I'm sick, and in the past when I haven't felt good, he has proven himself a worthy caretaker. But this time around, he's anything but. He went and got us food yesterday, and that was nice, but besides that, it almost feels like he's going out of his way to be contrary.

All I want to do is rest and either be cared for or be left alone, and instead I feel like I'm having to defend myself from his unfeeling remarks and lack of sympathy.

Is it just me? Am I just whiny because I'm sick?

I wish I knew how to overcome this. Every time I try to talk about it, it seems to make it worse. I guess all I can do is wait and see if it blows over after a couple more days.

Blah. I don't want to be sick anymore.

Sicky Saturday

I'm sick with a cold, missing the dress rehearsal for tomorrow's choir concert, sitting on the couch, waiting for my tea to be done steeping. I hate being sick, and I really really hate being sick on a weekend. All the things I wanted to get done today, not gonna happen.

The boy is away at drill all weekend, I won't see him until Sunday night. So in addition to being sick, I'm feeling a bit lonely. At least I have two fuzzy cats to keep me company. When I woke up this morning, they were both curled up on either side of my feet. :)

The boy had wanted me to watch the movie Jarhead, so I watched it last night by myself. Some parts of it really freaked me out. Until he's home safe, a year from now, I'm not sure if I'll be able to watch any military movie without projecting my own fears and worries. I'm so scared for him. I'm scared for us. I wish there was a way he could just stay home. I don't want him to go.

After the movie I was having trouble getting to sleep. I sat up and read the boy's journal that he wrote while he was in basic training. He dug it up out of a box for me, and this was the first time I'd cracked it open. He seemed to really enjoy some parts of the training. I'm glad. I'm happy that it was at least partially fun for him, that is wasn't the nightmare I'd always imagined it to be. But I have to say, there are some things I really don't understand and can't relate to.

The other night, the boy was frustrated and he said he wished he had a heavy punching bag. I told him I didn't understand his need to express himself physically and violently. I was careful to say that I wasn't judging him, that I don't think there's anything wrong with his need to express himself that way... just that it's foreign to me.

He explained it to me. When he releases energy through his body, he feels free, he feels that he can let go. I realized that's exactly how I used to feel when I would paint or play piano, and I realized how much I miss those emotional outlets. Then I understood his longing for that punching bag.

He's not so different from me after all, and I need to keep that in mind. Even though I don't understand why anyone would enjoy basic training, I have to remember that physical release is the boy's way of letting go and being himself, just like making music or art is mine.

I tried hard to remember this when I was watching the movie. But honestly, I still don't understand why anyone would volunteer to go to war. I mean, I know why he did it. He told me on the first night we met, and it makes perfect sense if I look at it from his point of view. But to me, from my own point of view, it's still so odd, and in a way, wrong.

I'm proud of the boy for what he's doing. He just finished a level 1 combatives class, and he did so well that the instructor personally asked him to come back next week for level 2. That's so awesome. I'm so proud of the boy for doing well in an area that he enjoys.

But damn that movie...

I guess I'm having trouble bringing the two sides of the army together in my brain. Really, there aren't two sides, there's only one army, right? But somehow I've separated it into two distinct parts --

One part is the one I'm familiar with, where the boy gets paid to train, doing something he enjoys, where he goes to drill for the weekend then comes back home to me, where his unit is located just a few towns away.

The other part is the one I'm not familiar with, where the boy is sent overseas and ordered to kill or be killed to defend his country, where I don't see him for almost a year, where I don't even get to talk to him regularly, where I'm not certain he's even coming home. This is the part I really can't comprehend, and the part that scares me and freaks me out when I watch military movies.

I don't want to think about what he's going to see over there, what he's going to experience, the kind of idiots he will have to serve with, or the danger he will be confronted with. It doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't want to deal with it. Does that mean I'm in denial?

I feel really at odds with myself on this one. I love the boy and I want to support him. But I hate the army, and I hate that he's in it. I hate that we're at war, I hate that I'm paying for it with my tax dollars, and I hate that he's going over there to fight for a cause I really don't believe in. The closer his deployment date gets, the more I'm finding myself torn, unable to reconcile this internal conflict.

The fact that I don't want to deal with it means that I can't use my usual coping method of researching and analyzing the fuck out of it, because research might give me information I would rather live without knowing. So how do I handle it? Do I continue to keep two parts of the army separated from each other? The one I understand and can deal with, and the one I don't understand and don't know how to deal with? It's worked so far, but once he's gone, I don't know if I can keep it up. I will want to look things up, I will feel a need to research, I will sit up at night analyzing. It's what I do. And when I do it, it's going to freak my shit out.

I'm scared. The bottom line is that I just want him to come home safely. I can deal with him coming back with injuries, missing limbs, psychological issues (although obviously I'd prefer to have him back in one piece and completely sane). But if they send him home in a box... gods... I think I would die.

...

So here I am, home sick on a Saturday, missing my boy, analyzing a subject I'm too afraid to analyze (figure that one out) when I should be resting, watching (non military) movies, and playing WoW.

You know what's great about Warcraft? When you die, you reappear as a ghost at the nearest graveyard, and all you have to do is walk back to your body to resurrect. Or ask the spirit healer to resurrect you on the spot. Even the monsters you kill will respawn if you wait long enough. It's a nice fantasy world where nobody ever really dies. At the end of the day, I'm always home safe.

I wish real life could be that way. But there are no assurances. You just have to do the best you can with the circumstances presented to you.

Stupid Social Constructs

A rare lunch hour by myself at my desk, leading to the second new post in one day...

So the boy and I are engaged. I haven't really told anyone about it. My family knows, his family knows, and I told one or two of my closest friends. Beyond that, I've kept it quiet. I didn't make a big announcement at work, and I didn't go to each person I know one by one and break the "big news".

There was no specific engagement date. Neither of us got down on one knee and popped the question. We just talked about it over a period of time and decided together that this is what we want to do.

Is it wrong that it doesn't seem like a big deal to me? I mean, I think it's wonderful and amazing that I'm so in love with the boy, that I really do want to spend my life with him. But the fact that we're engaged, in and of itself, is sort of inconsequential.

We've basically been committed to each other since the night he came home from training when we first fell in love. So it doesn't feel like our level of commitment has changed. I do think we're more in love now than we were then, but that's been a slow progression of continual growth and increased closeness over time. It didn't just happen because we decided to get married. To me, the only difference now is that we have a mutually agreed upon plan.

I guess the process of planning is really what led to our engagement. We started talking and figuring out what we wanted to do and when. Now we know. We both acknowledge that things might not go exactly the way we want, or happen at the exact time we want, but we're both flexible. We just want to be together. We want a family together. That's all that matters.

This all seems like a private matter to me. I've known girls who run out and tell everyone they know that they're engaged to be married. I've known girls who take pictures of the ring and post it on their website. I've known girls that have shared every detail of the wedding plans, at every step along the way. For those girls, that's totally cool. I understand how exciting it is to make a change in your life, and I fully support each person's method of handling it. If you want everyone to know, then by all means, shout it out. Flaunt it. Amen, sister.

But that's just not how I roll. I don't like to be the center of attention. I like to hide. I like to keep my private life private. It's the same reason why nobody in real life knows about this blog. I write in order to hash things out, or to document events for my own reference and reflection. I like to exchange comments with the people I've met here, but I have no need for the people I see every day to know this much detail about what goes on in my brain. The boy is the only exception to that rule.

I recently opened a new Facebook account, and I set my relationship status to "engaged". Holy crap, I've gotten so many comments on it. I was really surprised. I mean, I totally don't mind the standard friendly congratulations. But some people actually seem shocked or irritated that I didn't tell them personally.

In an odd way, it made me wonder who my real friends are. Most people who know me well (and there are only a select few), know that I don't like to shout that kind of information out to the world. I'm relatively quiet and introverted, especially about really personal things. For all the people who haven't figured that out yet... are you even really my friends?

I suppose I shouldn't look at it that way. There's nothing wrong with being surprised or wanting more information, and I don't mind answering questions. It's just... there's a reason why I chose not to make a big announcement, you know? I guess I didn't realize that the simple act of changing my relationship status on a website would turn out to be the equivalent of a big announcement.

I think people must wonder why I didn't announce it. Like maybe I'm not sure of what I'm doing, or maybe I'm hiding it for some reason. I'm probably being paranoid for thinking that, but it does seem like it is socially accepted and even expected that engagement and wedding announcements should be formal and official.

But I don't care what people think. I guess I'm just frustrated that it's turning into a big deal, because I really didn't want it to be a big deal. To me, it's not a big deal. It's just right. I know it and feel it with every part of my being. This is the right thing for me to do. It's what I want. It's what makes me happy. Something so right doesn't need a lot of fanfare. It is what it is, and I'm happy to sit back and watch it unfold as nature intended. Nothing more needs to be said.

Drive By

I'm the biggest blog slacker right now. My priorities have shifted in the last several weeks. The most important thing to me is to get through my work day as quickly and efficiently as possible so I can go home and spend time with my partner. Would you believe I've been at work before 8:00am two days in a row now? It's craziness I tell you!

Anyway, this will be a quick catch-up, because I need to get crackin' on work...

I went to the doctor. (This is an alternative doctor, mind you.) He thinks that I have a systemic candida infection. This would explain a lot of the issues I've been having for the last several months. The problem is that fixing it requires a pretty drastic change in my diet. I'm not supposed to eat any sugar or sweetener of any kind, no caffeine, nothing fermented like alcohol or vinegar (which is an ingredient in almost every condiment there is), nothing made with yeast including most breads, no simple carbs, and no fruit or fruit juice (except grapefruit). So basically all I can eat are meats, raw vegetables, and the occasional brown rice. Needless to say, with blood sugar issues, a finicky palette, and a desire not to lose weight, this diet is near impossible to achieve. I'm sitting here right now with a sweetened cup of black tea, getting ready to nibble on a cookie. :(

I'm also taking this acid supplement derived from castor bean oil which acts as an anti-fungal agent in my digestive tract, and I'm alternating that with probiotics throughout the day. Heavy quanities of acidophilus! I've also got digestive enzymes to help break down food. I'm slowly working my way back towards the gluten free diet I was on before, because at least I know I can mostly achieve that, and it's a step in the right direction.

Still... I sure like bread and sugar and fruit smoothies... and beer.

The boy's sister's baby is doing remarkably well. She is out of the incubator, off the oxygen tubes, and I think they've even removed her feeding tube. She's been upgraded to the last stage before she's ready to go home. Last I heard, she still weighted less than 2 lbs, but healthwise, she's doing better and progressing faster than some of the babies who have been in intensive care for several weeks. I hope they'll move her to Salem soon.

Work... same old. I guess the consultant finished his assessment and presented it to our leadership team. I've heard there were some really good recommendations. But thanks to the economy, it'll be a while before we start implementing any of his proposed solutions, like maybe 3-6 months. And the other positions I wanted to apply for in a different department are on hold too, for about the same time frame. So no changes for me for a while. I'm bummed out about it.

The boy is in combatives training all week long. He comes home every night looking very wiped out. Tomorrow they get to throw punches. I fully expect him to come home with bloody knuckles and a black eye. :(

This weekend the boy has drill and I've got a choir concert, so it's going to be a busy weekend for both of us, probably with not enough rest. I've decided not to sing in choir next term. I'm just not feeling this term, and I'm not ready to start rehearsals again on the 17th. I'd rather go out and drink green beer. Oh wait... I'm not supposed to have beer. :(

I'm not looking forward to the boy leaving for training in less than a month - I'm already starting to freak out and get a little depressed about it. But I imagine that when he's gone, I'll be back to my old internet-nerd ways, writing lots of blogs and comments, and probably playing a lot of Warcraft. I would rather have him here any day, but at least I'll have some distractions to occupy my mind while he's gone.

Anyway, that's about it for me. Happy Hump Day!