Altered Reality

Back to life, Back to Reality, that's how that cheesy song goes right? Except everything is messed up and I can't figure out what reality is anymore. All that pre-vacation to-do list stuff bumped my normal to-do list to the bottom of the list and now the list has hit overwhelming proportions again. Just one thing at a time right? Blah, blah, blah. I am so sick of living my life through some weird non-addiction like 12-step program. What is my addiction anyway? Getting stuff accomplished?

On the second to last day of vacation, the best/worst day, while I was driving from activity to activity my to-do list from back home had already started to creep back into my head. I tried to push it away, thinking I am still on vacation, go away, bug me on the four-hour drive home. Which me made with no stops, by the way, unheard of accomplishment, it was so cool. Back to topic, as the dreaded list is scrolling through the noggin I start trying to plan the whens, wheres, hows, and all the practical things to get this stuff crossed off. I notice I am starting to get into September in my brain and the list isn't done. I am now feeling that all too familiar tightening of the chest followed by a slight ballooning sensation, that let's me know I am on the road to mild panic/anxiety attack. They come so frequently now, especially in the car when all I can do is think and plan, that I was surprised the other day when I got through a drive without a squished chest.

The thing that really surprised me about this one was what set it off. The thought that I didn't have enough time to get it all done by October. I needed to get it done by October, four months away. It's not enough time. Four months, it's too short. I won't get everything done, and if it's not done by October then it's too late.

October's significance is that we think/hope that Dan will be coming home for mid-tour in October. Most people have the luxury of knowing when their R&R will be, but not Dan, he is an exception right now. We are thinking that he will know within the next month or so, we'll see. Like everything else, it's just a waiting game. He requested October but won't get final approval until they move him, yet again, to another job.

So here is where the whole altered thing comes to play for me. Since when did four months of waiting to see my husband become not enough time? 120 days, too little time?! It totally blew my mind. In the grand scheme of things I know four months is not much, even compared to fifteen months, it's not much. It still seems weird to me that somewhere in the past five/six months four months became, what? Easy? Bearable? What has the Army done to me? I remember crying when Dan got word once of having to leave for a five week training with just a few days notice. Then a few years later doing the same thing when he only got a couple weeks notice for some six and a half week training. And I always said to everyone that he was going to be gone six and a half weeks. I think now I would probably say, he'll be gone about a month for that length of time.

Am I now some sort of deployment wife snob? I think I might be. I actually made my first disparaging comment about Air Force deployments a couple weeks ago. They typically deploy about four months, maybe some unlucky fool has to go for six, that's a shocker. See, what I mean? I couldn't even get through a background info sentence without inserting some contempt. When did I get contempt for the AF? Dan hasn't even been Army for two years. He was AF or Air Guard for six years. I had not planned on becoming HOOAH, how did this happen? I am confused.

I do not know what to do, how to function, or even where to go from here in this new altered reality.