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.