WAR

I am a strong advocate of autonomy but believe deployment is not a positive autonomous experience and is psychological warfare on relationships. The soldier who is in a war zone is put in a situation that requires them to act in a manner based solely on self preservation far from the values and morals that we are raised with in our society. They are not likely to share with the loved ones at home what they are experiencing or doing to protect the loved ones from worrying. The loved one(es) therefore cannot fully understand what the soldier is going through and may not be able to give the right kind of support or assurance the soldier may be yearning for. When the soldier comes home they are expected to switch gears and smoothly transition back into normal society where they may fear that what they have done or the choices they may have made under duress, may be viewed with disgust and aversion. This creates an environment where the soldier can not open up and share their experience and leaves the loved one in a position where they are unable to reach out and heal and show unconditional love and understanding. A wall is often created where the soldier suffers in silence thinking that they are still protecting their partner from the shame and embarrassment that they themselves are feeling but in fact their partner may be feeling lost, shut out and angry. This may help to explain in part why there is a 60-70% divorce rate in the Army...

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. -A.N.

My husband was in Afghanistan for 6 months and at some point during that time I started to re-awaken. I was watching a very steamy scene on TV and normally I would have felt nauseous but this time my body reacted with warm tingles. Suddenly everything was in working order and I felt like I just might eat a man alive if the opportunity presented itself. After years of feeling deadened and ashamed of my lack of desire and response I felt healthy and alive again. For the first time since getting together with my husband 6 years ago, I felt desire for another man. There is something big that happens to a woman's sexuality after having children. I feel like I own it more than I ever did as a young woman and it no longer makes me nervous as it once did when I would receive unwanted cat calls or attention. I had started seeing a therapist when I went on anti-depressants and he recommended that I look into Anais Nin. I believe he suggested her to me so that I wouldn't feel so alone in some of my thoughts and ideas, so that I had some one to identify with. She was a very unconventional woman for her time and lived a very forward life. I found right away when I started reading her journals that we shared many traits. For a long while now I have been interested in exploring an open marriage. Not for the reasons most would assume though. It's not, for me, about needing or wanting to have sex with other men to satisfy a great sexual hunger or to replace my absent father. Rather I like to imagine having such a strong and solid love with someone that we could allow each other autonomous intellectual and sexual experiences outside of our marriage. Quite frankly I'm not interested in only making love to one man for the rest of my life. I never thought too much about getting married before I did or about what the institution of marriage meant to me. I've had lots of time to reflect on it since marrying and I find it odd that the way we prove and declare love for our partner is to deny ourselves what we desire for the rest of our lives. Now another thing that I have come to believe is that staying with one person and working on and focusing on that one relationship for a long time allows for personal growth that is unlikely if you are always playing the field or spreading yourself around. Once you have allowed yourself to be totally vulnerable and once you feel that sense of security in a relationship then you can focus on yourself and the problems you work through with your partner teach you and help you to grow as a human. I believe in long term and loyal relationships and I want to have that but loyalty, to me, does not mean total sacrifice. What about being loyal to yourself? What about the ways you can grow and learn through other people? What if being lovers for a time with another person allows you to expand in a direction you weren't with your partner or just jump starts your body and mind? Anais had an open marriage and many lovers but her reasons were different than mine. Still it felt nice to feel that she would have understood me and not judged me to be an awful wife.
My husband is not interested in pursuing this type of relationship and it will, at some point, become too great a difference for us to put aside. For now it is not something we speak of. And I understand why. For years he's felt unwanted and insecure because of my lack of desire towards him, like he's going to be ok with me wanting to be with other men. I knew not to push it until we were doing better. About two and a half months into his deployment we decided to separate. There was a lot of back and forth and painful things said that led up to it and the decision didn't hold very long- about three weeks I think. When we decided to keep trying there was a rush of new excitement and energy into our relationship and I felt hope which had been missing for a while. During our brief separation I had started flirting with an old friend online. Nothing overt or indiscreet but provocative, slightly veiled and exciting. My creativity flowed freely again in my emails to him and my imagination ran wild. When my husband and I decided to keep trying I didn't immediately inform this other man because I couldn't stand the thought of not having the excitement of that interaction in my life. The energy did eventually shift back into an appropriate realm but it wasn't really my doing and i knew that if given the opportunity, I would take things much further. My husband and I separated once more about a month before he was due to come back and again we decided to keep trying only this time I didn't feel as much hope and since that time I have felt that I have one foot out the door and can't really, fully invest in us. Upon his return the sex was great which relieved my fears that my newly awakened sexuality wouldn't translate into our marriage and we immediately prepared for a month long trip back to the States to see friends and family.

Thumbs Up Party

Today while driving my husband to work ELO came on the radio and my four year old son announced from the back seat that his two and a half year old sister was, "having a thumbs up party." Sure enough a glance in the rear view mirror confirmed that she was in full party mode, thrusting a thumb up on alternating hands in perfect rhythm. Not only was I impressed with her musicality but I was jealous that she could feel so much unbridled joy at 7am on a gloomy, cold Bavarian day. I had a million things on my mind and the weight of the screwed up world on my shoulders. NPR came on and summed up the VP debate. Then the generally depressing round of reporting on various world events. Then we're at the gate and I flash my ID to the guards and drive on into another world. Our Base has doubled in size in the last year and the number of single soldiers has more than doubled. At least it feels that way. Every where you look there are young men and women in their ACU's. Many of them are participating in 'exercises' and are carrying machine guns with helmets on and lower lips full of chew. My son calls out eagerly when he spots a gun and I think to myself for the umpteenth time- "How the HELL did I end up here?"

In June of 2002 I was living in NYC just managing to make ends meet and feeding off of the creative energy that abounds in that magical city. I was held up at knife point in the upscale bathing suit store I was working at and quit the next week. I was renting my own wing of an apartment in the upper west side of Manhattan from friends of a friends parents for $500 a month. Try finding that anywhere in the city. The same week I quit my job they told me their daughter and her new husband were moving back home and I'd have to find somewhere else to live. I didn't have any money saved so I had to leave the city. There's usually a silver lining and mine was that I reconnected with an old friend and casual lover and this time the chemistry was undeniable and unrelenting. He had already signed up with the Air Force and was about to leave. We consumed one another as new lovers do and then he was gone.... Over the next year I waited through basic training and then he went to tech school and we could talk and write letters again. He came home for christmas with this new wiry, muscly body and sadness in his eyes and my heart couldn't accept being without him. We decided soon after that visit to go monogamous and I went out to visit him on the Gulf Coast for valentines day. When I arrived at the small airport I didn't see him and started down the escalator to the lower level. A huge bouquet of yellow daffodils was thrust in front of my face about half way down and I felt his kiss on my neck. After some hemming and hawing and a summer spent in a tent so I could save money, I moved to his first duty station in Belleville ,Illinois. Now two things I had promised myself were that I would never work at a fast food chain or live in the mid west. And there I was. We lived in a tiny house off base and I got a job tending bar at a couple skeezy joints and he was working all kinds of crazy shifts. We made love two or three times a day most weeks, got in terrible drunken fights and started getting to know each other bit by bit. Six months into it I was pregnant. Being young and idealistic we decided to have the baby and get married. Then came the orders to Germany which we had both pushed for and when our son was 8 months old we moved across the ocean. Two months after arriving I was pregnant again and very nearly had an abortion but my husbands eagerness to have another baby rubbed off on me enough for me to change my mind.

That's the epidermis. The dermis is that I had quit my jobs once I became too sick from the pregnancy and I didn't have any friends in Illinois so my days were punctuated by the coming and going of my husband's little red car. I would loiter in front of our kitchen door window until I saw that flash of red. During the days I would invent errands for myself to get out of the house. I was for the first time since leaving home, fully dependent on someone and it didn't feel totally right. After all I certainly wasn't thinking about marriage and never really felt that stereotypical urge that women have to 'be taken care of'. I had left behind a very full and fulfilling social life and family support network and wasn't able to share my changing life and body. After the first baby was born I remember a lot of new parent bliss and the isolation became more bearable as my days were filled with the new wonders of a baby. I finally made a good friend with a baby around the same age who was as laid back as I and who could sink a glass of wine with me in between nursings. Then we moved to Germany and the next baby came which I really wasn't ready for. She was a screamer and I had a very busy toddler and most days felt exhausted and overwhelmed. I let the baby cry a lot and felt a lot of resentment towards her. Then I felt guilty because our bonding wasn't happening as effortlessly as it had with my son and I worried that she would be an unhappy person because I let her cry so much. Those were dark days. I didn't want to make love, kiss or even to be affectionate with my husband- that lasted nearly four years. I felt like a part of myself that had once been so healthy had sickened and died. The guilt was endless-knowing how much hurt and insecurity I was causing my husband sent me on a downward spiral. I never felt like I had enough for anyone let alone myself. Again I made one dear friend and this time she left me about half a year after my daughter was born.

Trying to insert myself into military life and the things that wives do has been like the old square peg in a round hole saying. The isolation got worse and the depression got worse. I had lived a prior life full of amazing friends, artists, musicians, thinkers, doers, questioning, seeking, creating and supportive people. Now my social life revolved around the occasional work function where none of the young 20 something single soldiers were interested in my mind or what I might have to say. I am a spouse and a mother and it stops at that. I felt myself slipping farther and farther away from an identity that I could be proud of. My marriage was falling apart and had been for a long time. I started to internally shoulder all the blame for this and all of my unhappiness. One night found me wailing and sobbing and a mantra escaped- " I hate myself, I hate myself.." I had one brief thought that everyone would be better off without me and that was it. I made an appointment the next day to see a doctor on base, sucked up my pride and asked to be put on an anti- depressant. I am of the opinion that Americans are over medicated and I had just read the report that the waste from Americans is full of by products from anti- depressants and is affecting the water life. But my husband was preparing to deploy for six months and I couldn't mess around- I was about to be a single parent and could not risk being that depressed. I asked to be put on Welbutrin because I had read that in some clinical studies it was shown to improve sexual disfunction which I hadn't been diagnosed with but I certainly wasn't functioning like I wanted to in that department. I started the medication and my husband shipped off. We didn't make love the night before he left and our parting was thick with sadness and relief.