By Jade Stone
Have you ever gotten news about something that would happen in the future that you weren’t so happy about? Did you happen to find yourself wishing you could just get it over with already? Well, I think I’m there now!
Most everyone knows my husband will for sure be going back overseas (as for sure as the Army can be, anyway!), it seems people who realize he will leave in June suddenly become ridiculously positive and emit an immeasurable amount of optimism that seems to seethe into my nerves every time he or she says “Oh, we’ll be out of there by then, maybe he won’t have to go”. I know they mean well. I also know that they are some of my biggest supporters and I wouldn’t make it without them, however, there are just some days that I deal with it better than others.
I try to explain that in my mind, there is no room for this sort of optimism because it opens the door for disappointment to drench my life in a dark haze that was not planned for and if you know me, I hate not being prepared! That’s usually when they tell me not to be so pessimistic but, for me, it’s just easier to expect the worst and then I don’t end up being disappointed that it didn’t turn out the way I had hoped. The fact that he’s going back, in my mind, is a thought that is set in stone and you can’t convince me right now that he won’t go. Furthermore, not only do I believe he will go, I think it will end up being earlier than June, especially since the current purpose is to remove troops and part of his job will involve troop transport.
This may seem strange, but somehow I see my own point of view through a lens of manipulated optimism. I know many of you can’t imagine how expecting a loved one to go off to war could be optimistic (and I would have to agree) but I suppose that I am somewhat thankful for this deployment and what his expected mission will be because I know for a fact that it could be so much worse. He could be in a much more despicable place, with a far more dangerous mission, with a much more incompetent group of people.
Not that what he’s doing is not dangerous. Any place a person learns to identify the actual sound of a bullet rushing marginally close to one’s head on a base lovingly renamed “Mortaritaville” by its soldiers because of the constant bombardment of mortar rounds 24/7 is not exactly a place I am ever going to feel safe in.
My husband told me once “Don’t worry about the mortar rounds. Besides, they have bad aim!” Really, this is supposed to ease my nerves? Somehow this didn’t make me feel better. Now it’s a game of chance! At any rate, this particular place in his MOS is actually much better than so many others. For instance, my brother was with the Army Engineers and their mission involved moving from town to town searching for insurgence. This entailed convoys and where there are convoys, there are roadside bombs, car bombs, and women and children walking the roads strapped with bombs. It’s kind of hard to imagine that anyone could do such horrible things to their own people but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
My brother saw some of the worst things one can imagine and is incredibly lucky to have come back with only a broken back and 100% disability…so, yes, optimistic and thankful am I for this particular deployment! The battle I fight now is that I want to hurry up and send him over before someone higher up the food chain than we are decides he should do something worse. I’m not ready to get rid of him but why prolong the inevitable or take the chance of the inevitable being traded for a much worse fate, right? So until the day he leaves, in all things concerning this new journey, I will remain pessimistically optimistic!
Jade welcomes your comments here as well as any suggestions you may have for her future posts. You may also e-mail her at akajadestone@yahoo.com. To read previous Military Mama posts, CLICK HERE.
