Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Back Home

Yesterday evening, after spending two delicious weeks with my boyfriend since his homecoming from Afghanistan, I got on the train, back to my apartment in Cologne.

As we sat in the car in the parking lot of the train station I was a little melancholic. My boyfriend asked me if I was sad to be leaving him, and I said that yes, I would miss him, but that wasn't what was making me sad as we will be seeing each other again next week, and then for our 3 week trip. Rather it was the realization that the last time we had said goodbye to each other at that train station was the day before he deployed. It was a sad memory, and I was reliving it in some sense.

We hugged goodbye, and I boarded the train. The train ride was uneventful, however the closer I got to Cologne, the more of a sense of foreboding, or going back to a place I didn't want to be, crept upon me. I couldn't really understand it, because I was happy to get back to my apartment, to see friends I hadn't seen in a month, and to finalize some exam preparations. Then I realized that for some reason, I was associating my apartment with my life pre-redeployment. As if when I would get back to my apartment, I would be back in my life of the girlfriend of a deployed soldier.

It didn't make any sense, because the deployment is over. But I felt like crying. It was as if I was suddenly remembering how hard it had all been, everything I had forgotten since he had returned. Redeployment is sometimes compared to a birth. That you are waiting for something that you know will happen around a certain time, but the date is only projected and not certain. And it can be a long and strenuous and emotionally painful event. But afterwards, when your soldier has returned to you, you almost forget all that, and are just happy to have your soldier back. Suddenly, when my boyfriend wasn't physically present, I was remembering the sadness of the deployment.

But all those feelings of dreading washed away as soon as I entered my apartment. I saw all my familiar belongings, things I had almost forgotten while living in the bliss of reunion at my boyfriend's place. And there was a message on the answering machine from my mother welcoming me back home.

And I realized that this was another milestone in the whole deployment. Now it really seems officially over. I am back home, and my boyfriend is back home, and we are back in our pre-deployment lives. Such sweet bliss!

4 Comments:

Blogger ThatBeeGirl said...

I'm noting here about 'AD.' :)

A) I wasn't pouting.
Okay, maybe I was. ;)

B) It hasn't been officially canceled. At least not yet.

C)YAY for you guys getting into the show!

:)

3:47 PM  
Blogger nicole said...

It is good to have a normal, routine life again...and I completely understand what you said about getting out of the "deployment-state-of-mind"...it's good when you finally realize that, for now at least, it's over. :)

5:35 AM  
Blogger Rachelle Jones said...

yeah enjoy the time....it is fleeting I know

oh and tag your it

7:24 PM  
Blogger Shannon said...

I have to say, it was really hard for me to snap out of the deployment mindset. I can't explain it, but I had a really hard time with the crying jags over stupid shit lol.

I wrote about one - when he had gone to test drive a truck. The longer he was gone, the more panicked I became. NOT normal - but I'd just spent a year being terrified and it was hard to turn that part off I guess.

Gosh I'm dreading round two...

6:38 PM  

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