I've deployed before, a few times before to be exact and none of them have been as emotionally hard on me as this one. Even so, I'm glad I'm here having the experience of a lifetime. I've heard others say that they wasted six months or more of their lives here but they obviously can't see the bigger picture. I try to point out the uniqueness of this experience even though we are surrounded by thousands of people here, in the scheme of things the numbers of those physically supporting the war in Afghanistan or any war are small.
The difference between this deployment and my past ones, is the fact I'm a mom now and that brings a whole other dynamic to the table. I have family and friends that I love and cherish and deeply miss when I'm gone but my feelings of homesickness were far more manageable than they are now. A part of me wants to stay home and raise my daughter as nature intended but I have lived a life of self sufficiency and I've never lived in one place for longer than three years since I graduated high school and barely longer than that before I graduated.
My mom tells me stories of how she couldn't turn her back on me because I'd run off. From the time I could walk, I would go on mini-adventures looking for something but even I don't know what that something was. I just liked to travel and see things and I was never satisfied just being in the same place with the same people doing the same ole things day in and day out.
I think that is why I chose the Navy over any other service because of the myriad of travels I could do in a short period of time. My first West-Pac included 12 port visits and having experienced that solidified that I had made the right decision.
So here I am, a traveler and adventurer, but now I'm a mother who needs to be there for her daughter because it is what I want and so she doesn't grow up not knowing who I am but yet I feel like I volunteered for this deployment because the adventurer in me needed a change of scenery and perspective. I knew I'd be deploying at some point in the future but I figured it would be on my last tour in the Navy but when that assignment came across my desk, I had this overwhelming feeling to go and to this day I don't know why. A year before that I would have found any excuse possible not to leave Sari but back then I didn't know who I could trust to care for her either and she was so young and dependent on me, I'd have felt like I was abandoning her.
Now I think I picked the right age to go because what is turning out to be so hard on me is that she doesn't even care that I'm gone. Yesterday when I finally got to Skype with her she didn't even want to talk to me after not talking to me for a week but instead she wanted to go watch one of her movies. I sucked down the pain I could feel rising up in me because I had to rationalize that she is just too young to understand and that all her needs are being met by her loving grandmother. Children at this age are all about wants and needs so absent parents aren't exactly what is missed.
It's still very hard because I love her so much and I just want to be there for her but being here is my way of being there for her because I have plans for our future and this is one step in the right direction for that future. It's a tough sacrifice but its what I have to do to ensure that Sari and I have what we need to succeed at a better life for us.
I just don't want a future where I leave her time and time again. I know that is not the right plan either and I will do my best to ensure a balance between my need to see the world and my responsibility to being there for her. Besides, she's going to be a traveller too and we will have many adventures together before she goes off on her own to see the world and find her own answers to life.
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