No regrets

All the advice people that give me about deployment is all about regret. Regretting that they spent a lot of time being depressed about the deployment, regretting the arguments and the silly fights that were started over nothing. Spending the whole year wishing they had spent those last months a little different. Regret. It is a powerful wound.

Robert and I have decided that for the rest of October and all of Novemeber and December (up till the day he leaves), we will have live our lives with no regret. No silly arguments, no spending time moping around, not getting stressed out over everything. We have promised each other that we will spend all the time we have in a great spirits, having fun, enjoying life, making memories and just going along with life.

It is totally easier said than done. The Army life is just one being stress headache. You wake up and there are days that you are stressed from the moment you wake up, until the moment you go to sleep. You even stress in your dreams about things. It is really bad for me, because I stress out over everything and I stress bad. If the time he was going to be released was changed by an hour, I can fly off the handle and just break down. My life was consumed in stress and depression. I wanted to get out of that and wanted to be happy again. My husband kept asking me how he can make me happy again. The only thing is, he could not make me happy. Nothing made me happy because I just assumed that once I was happy, I would be sad again.

I went to my doctor a while back and she was worthless. She pretty much walked in, asked what she could do for me. I told her that I needed help with stress management and depression. What did she do? She did not ask any questions and prescribed me Prenatal viatmins and Celxia(sp?). I took the medicine and within an hour of it, I had a horrible reaction to it. Instead of helping my anxiety, it took it and multiplied it by 100x. I literally become the Green Hulk. It was bad.

I decided to try natural remedies and vitamins. They just made me sleepy. I was literally crying every night, because I just wanted to feel normal again. I kept telling my husband that I wanted to be the wife he married and I did not know how to. I went to counseling and that was no good. One counselor told me it was normal and it was just because I was an army wife. The other one just listened to me and never spoke a word of advice or anything. I began to wonder if this is how life would be forever. I hated being stressed out and just angry all the time. I hated that I lashed out at Robert for things that were out of his control.

I feared that he would have to leave the Army because I could not handle this lifestyle. I detested that thought. I love being an Army wife. I love waking up and seeing the pride in his eyes. I remember when he would wake up and just have dread in his eyes as he got ready to go to work at his dead end job. I remember the pride in his eyes when I saw him graduate from BCT and AIT. This is where he belongs and it is where I belong. Why is it so hard for me to do something that I want to do?

I finally saw another doctor and after asking me a series of questions, she determined that there was something wrong. She gave me a schedule to follow by. Walking an hour every single day, limit caffiene intake, prescribed me sleeping medication (since I have not been sleeping) and Prozaic. Ever since then, things have started returning to normal. I still stress out, but it is not as bad and I am over it quicker. Ever since I started the medicine, I have noticed our fights have been next to nothing, Robert is happier, the boys are happier and so I am. I am not throwing up due to stress, I am not getting angry over stupid things, I am able to handle things much better. More importantly, I have been able to enstill in my husband the confidence that I can hold everything together when he is gone. The true test is going to be field time. He is leaving for a week and field time is usually the worst for me. We shall see, I have high hopes.

We have now made a pact. We refuse to let anything come between us and our family. We promise that instead of yelling and getting mad, we will hug and compliment each other. We promise each other that when things get rough with his unit (every day occurence lately), that we will laugh it off and move on. I do not want to spend the deployment wishing I did not let the unit get in the way of us. I do not want to spend the deployment wishing that I was a better wife or wishing that I had handled things better.I do not want to spend all deployment wishing that I had not given him crap about crappy things in his unit or about his unit. I do not want to spend the whole deployment wondering if Robert was over there worrying about me and how I was handling things at home. I want him to leave with the upmost confidence in me.

I love my husband with all my heart and I will stop at nothing to make his last month here is not miserable. I refuse to start an argument because of work or because the kids are driving me nuts and he doesn't have the energy to help me out. Every day, minute, hour and second is precious to us. Why waste it over stupid stuff? It doesn't make sense to me. So, no regrets.