I apologize if I’m out of practice. It’s been 20 months since I’ve last posted a blog. I’ll get into the reasons for that below.
I’m currently on an airplane, flying to Albuquerque to (hopefully) do some flying. I don’t think I’m on the schedule for tomorrow. Whatever. I’ll get a little sleep, work the paper side of the job, and hopefully get my master’s class done for the week.
Flying has, since I’ve been home from Iraq, been a pensive thing for me. I think I know why; I spent the longest flight of my life (up to that time) flying to Iraq, thinking/worrying about what would happen while I was there. My next commercial flight was home for mid-tour, which I spent thinking/worrying about how my visit home would be. I think flew back to Iraq wondering how I’d get through the next 4 months. My flight home from Iraq was even longer than the flights previous. (Sid you know that the most direct flight from Baghdad to Al-Udeid involves a C-17 flight to Afghanistan? It’s true.) It involved 5 caskets with American flags on them, so I was even more full of thought than the flights before.
Today I’m thinking about how much my year in Iraq, and the year since then. have changed me.
I know it has. I know there are good things and bad ones, and some that I don’t know which category to lump them into. There are some that I want to talk about, some that I don’t, some that I need to and some I don’t (and they don’t always line up in want/need, don’t want/don’t need to). I’m not sure if I’ll post this note, or if I’ll even show it to T. But I think I need to write it.
I guess I’ll go with the number one good, bad, and undecided things and hope that writing them out makes it all clear in my head.
GOOD
The absolute best thing that came out of Iraq was that T and I are much, much stronger than we were before. Deep down inside (and not very deep after saying this) I think we knew that if we can come out of Iraq strong (if not stronger than before) there’s very little we couldn’t handle together. I’ll freely admit that Iraq was brutal on us. Add in fertility issues, that involved into pregnancy issues, plus a PCS AND a post-deployed Mark, and I’m not sure how the hell we’re still here. I know now, looking back on it, that in the long term the fertility issues were good for my marriage. It’d be enough that those issues lead to solutions, which then lead to Emma. But other thing they did was unite T and I. This is the example I always use to explain it (because it works):
Think about it like the Drill Instructor during Basic Training. He or she is a jerk for many reasons: military life is hard so get used to it, you need to learn to blindly follow orders, and just for the fact that if you can handle getting screamed at in the Texas heat while pushing the ground until you puke, the network losing your powerpoint isn’t such a big deal. But the real reason the DI is a jerk is this: they know you’ll sit around at night and bitch about that asshole SSgt Johnson. The very act of bitching about the DI unites you—you want to make that ass eat his words, or at the minimum keep her from screaming at you.
Fertility was like that for T and I. We wanted to beat it so badly that sometimes we might have forgotten that the end result was our beautiful daughter—we just wanted to beat Fertility so badly that it’s wife had a black eye.
BAD
The worst thing to come out of Iraq is that my emotional state is still far from equilibrium. I’ve always had a bit of manic depression/bipolar in me. I’ve always gone high to low and back, sometimes the waves are long, slow movements that take days or weeks to go through either side, with a long chunk in the middle of whatever passes for normal. Sometimes it would ping-pong rapidly, where I’d go high/low a couple of times in a day. Sometimes it would be both…I’d be low for weeks, then slam to high for a day, then back into the doldrums of depression for another week. Or the absolute worst where I’d go through a chunk when I’d feel like I was full of cotton—I was up or down, just flat emotionally. I could hang out with friends and not smile, but it wasn’t like I’d go back to my room and cry myself to sleep. I’d stare at the computer for a day or three, go through the motions of life and just count time until I could lay on my bed and play Sudoku or read. (that’s how I spent the last months in Iraq. I’ve had other times in my life like that, but the spring of ‘11 was the worst. Add in insomnia with a side of, well, Iraq in 2011, and you have a pretty good picture of my last 1/3 of my tour.)
Wow, that was a long explanation.
Anyway, I’m still not back to ‘normal.’ I have always had a temper, and it’s been harder since I’ve been home to keep it under control. It’s been worse when I don’t get sleep, which is awesome when you have a 7 month old and/or repeated ear infections. When Emma sleeps, it hurts to put my head on the pillow and I’ll wake myself up when I roll over. When my ears are fine, Emma wakes up twice a night. I’m bitching now. I’ll stop.
So my temper has been hard to control. And while my emotional roller coaster has been much more level on the whole high/low scene, I get emotional over EVERYTHING. I can remember sniffing over a book before, and getting a little misty over a sad movie, but I wiped tears from my eyes during the Muppet movie for God’s sake. In TWO different parts. BOTH TIMES I’VE WATCHED IT. I get goosebumps from listening to music I’ve heard a hundred times before. Looking at pictures of Emma on my phone when I’m away from home both cheers me up and simultaneously makes me miss my family so bad it hurts. Watching the news will piss me off. I’ll be in a bad for a full day because of bad driving on the highway (I’m not sure if that’s because Emma’s in my car and you don’t mess with Daddy, or simple because Texas drivers are so bad). AND OH MY GOD WHY ARE ALL THE STUPID PEOPLE AT THE GROCERY STORE WHEN I’M THERE? IS IT THAT HARD TO WALK ON THE FREAKING RIGHT OR NOT BLOCK THE WHOLE AISLE? IT’S BREAKFAST CEREAL, NOT ROCKET SCIENCE! YOU’LL GET SOME FIBER, SOME B-12 AND THERE’S MILK SO IT’S GOOD FOR YOU! (sorry)
THE UGLY…I mean, THE UNKNOWN
I have no idea if I love the Air Force any more.
I love, in the truest sense of the word, the friends I’ve made in my time in the Air Force. Especially those while I was deployed. My co-workers in Texas are fantastic and have been welcoming from day 1, supportive to the lone Huey pilot in the building, and fantastic when I broke my foot and when Emma made her grand appearance.
I have very, very little fulfillment in what I do. My desk job bores me to tears, and I am very, very hard pressed to come up with a single, truly important thing I’ve accomplished since I’ve been on the staff. I’ve had plenty of OPR fodder, and some pretty good bullets that will push me towards getting promoted.
But there hasn’t been a single thing I’ve done I’m really proud of since I was in Iraq. Nothing I can think of has done anything more than either complicate someone’s life through paperwork, or slightly un-complicating the life of someone by clearing a different bit of paperwork. In DC even holding alert served a purpose. Some of the work I did as the exec made a huge impact, whether it was setting up golf for Obama or simply helping a retiree get some VA benefits.
It’s making it very hard to decide what to do in the future. I owe the AF another 15 months. Then I can walk away, but leave the potential retirement check which would make life very easy in the future. I’d take early retirement if they offered it (at a huge discount to uncle Sam). I’m not excited about future jobs. I feel like I’m marking time until I can move back to the STL and start a new life. I know how badly T wants to go home. I’d love it if I could get into a house and stay there by the time Emma starts school.
–OK—
This started out as a self examination because I was in the kind of mood. It’s turned into ranting/whining. I’ll end it here before it turns into self pity.
