My husband was deploying for a year with a MiTT Team (Military Transition Team). He had been assigned to the unit as an Individual Augment. That meant he was picked out of his home unit and temporarily assigned to a new unit. This team worked up for the deployment an hour away from our home. For the three months leading up to the deployment my husband had to drive an hour both ways and often stay overnight for training events.
I started mentally transitioning to him being gone before he ever left. Daily I had to take on more around the house because my husband was not able to come home at a regular time. The routines I was trying to establish for my 4-month-old son were all my responsibility. There was no co-parenting during deployment workups. I could not rely on a partner to get up through the night when my son needed to eat. There was no one to rock him so I could sleep just a little longer.
This is familiar to so many military spouses. There is not a true balance at home in military life. Regular daily activities must be maintained by the spouse when the service member is deployed or preparing to deploy. Otherwise, those essential life tasks are not done consistently. That is the reality of military service.
Deployment day: The marathon begins
The day my husband left on his year-long deployment felt like the start of a marathon. I was lining up at the starting blocks getting ready to hear the gunshot. Mentally I was ready to get the year over with. We spent three months preparing for him to leave. I wanted to stop preparing and get things underway.
We said our goodbyes. The small group of Marines on the transition team filled the white buses and drove away. For a moment my breath caught, and I did not know how to proceed. The gunshot went off, and I froze.
Deployment is tough for any military spouse, but when you add the challenges of living with Crohn’s disease and caring for a baby, it can seem insurmountable. Looking back at pictures of myself at the time, I look fine. There are no outward signs to suggest that internally I was a mess.
When embarking on the year, I did not even start a countdown. How could I start with over 300 days to cross off? Wading through it was like walking through quicksand in a dark tunnel. There were cracks of light to let me know I was moving slowly forward, but it took so much effort that I felt I was barely getting by.
Chronic illness flares up
Part of living with a chronic illness is the reality that you can only go so long before you have to reveal details about your health to friends. Going through deployment with a baby, I knew I wanted to build a community I could rely on if I needed to go to a doctor’s appointment or just needed a couple of hours to myself.
The ideal military spouse community was not there for me. The stress of the deployment tunnel was weighing me down. And, new motherhood without a break raised my stress levels to the point where my health challenges started brewing again.
I tried to ride out what was a really dangerous situation. Chronic symptoms were flaring regularly. My body was in a state of chaos. Every week, I had two or three bad days, then I would feel better for a day or two. After that, the cycle would start over again. I was trying to maintain my routine, but it was faltering. Pretending like I could wait things out was not a viable solution. I needed an off-switch for my everyday responsibilities, but life goes on in deployment and illness. My disease was about to be more than I could handle.