Anger and Loathing on the Homefront.

It isn't possible to adequately describe what a long military deployment is like for those left behind, but I'm going to try anyway. I'm going to try, even though I know that my own experience and my own views aren't necessarily going to reflect what others in similar situations are going through. I'm going to try, even though I've tried three times before now, and chickened out before clicking on the publish button every time. I'm going to try, in my own inadequate way, to describe something I've only recently come to realize - the degree to which my own feelings about the war affect the way I feel about the deployment.

By way of background, and this is old news to those who have read this blog for any length of time, my wife is an active-duty officer in the United States Army. Since July, she has been deployed in Iraq. This deployment is her second combat-zone tour - she was deployed to Afghanistan for the OEF-5 rotation (2004-2005). During both deployments, I have remained in Hawaii - where her unit is usually stationed - with our two children.

The feelings I have this deployment are very different from the ones I had last time. The differences have very little to do with the danger that's involved - my wife tells me, and I've heard this from other soldiers who have been deployed to both locations, that she was in danger more often when she was in Afghanistan than she was when she was in Iraq.

The differences also have little to do with what I go through at home. The children are older now then they were during the last deployment, and they are more aware of what is happening over there (particularly our older child) but being older, they are also better able to pull together with me, and that makes it easier for the three of us to get through this together.

Actually, it's not the experience of the deployment that has been different as much as it's been my reaction to the deployment. The last deployment was difficult to get through, but this one has been far worse (and it's not over yet). I was worried when my wife was in Afghanistan, and I am worried now that she's in Iraq. But worry is no big deal. Concern, and even fear, are emotions that really aren't that hard to live with. I've been worried to some degree for a very long time now - at least since I first found out I was going to be a father nearly ten years back.

Worry - or concern, or fear, or whatever you call it - is an emotion that's easy to get used to, and it's an emotion that's easy to deal with. If someone you love is in a job that regularly exposes them to danger, you learn to manage the fear. You learn to put it away until it is really needed, or you quite simply go insane. Anger, though . . . anger is something different. Anger is a lot harder to live with. It's harder to put aside, and it's not something that you can save up and deal with later. As hard as anger is to deal with in the best of circumstances, it's even harder to deal with anger when the anger gets coupled to powerlessness.

And right there - angry and powerless - is where I've been living for a long time now.

The powerlessness is probably the easier emotion to understand, so I'll start with that. There's nothing about a deployment that doesn't contribute to a feeling of powerlessness. Every part of this is outside my control. I can't do anything about where my wife is. I don't really know what it's like there. I have no way to assess the real level of danger, and even if I could there isn't a single thing I could do about it. I have no control over how long she will be there or when she will return.

A lack of understanding adds to the powerlessness. I could not possibly begin to understand what it is like to be in combat - I have never been there. I do not have anything that comes remotely close to an understanding of what things are like there. The best that I can hope for is to understand that those who have been in combat share a bond that the rest of us cannot truly comprehend. That bond - the bond shared by combat veterans - is one of the things that makes deployments so difficult to deal with, especially when it's happening to your spouse. My wife and I are experiencing life in ways that are enormously different right now. My father, a Vietnam veteran, has things in common with my wife that I do not share. Their shared understanding comes from having experienced things that both wish they had not experienced. I understand that. I also understand that they understand each other's experiences because, although the combat took place in different decades and different countries, the pain is similar. I can understand those things intellectually, but that's a very long way from sharing those experiences. The understanding doesn't make it any easier to see either set of nightmares, either.

And that hurts. It makes me feel cheated out of something. It makes me feel cheated out of something very important, even though I certainly wouldn't cherish either set of experiences. That's probably because, even though I honestly don't know where I stand on the whole god thing, my wife and I were married in a traditional service, and I do take those vows very seriously. I promised to stand with her for better or worse, in good times or bad. It's a lot harder to stand with someone who is experiencing something very different than anything you can imagine, because you know nothing about what it's like to be there.

Marriage should, in an ideal world, be a bond that is forged between two people - one that allows them to help each other through a set of shared experiences. Combat deployments take that away. It might not take it away for very long in chronological terms, but it takes it away for a very, very, very long time in terms of real experience. It creates situations where each spouse goes through an extremely trying experience without their partner. Your spouse can help you, of course - through letters, or emails, or phone calls, or any other form of communication imaginable. Your spouse can help you get through the experience, but your spouse isn't going through the experience with you. Instead, he or she is going through an experience that is at least as difficult as the one you are going through, and doing so without you.

It's really hard to tell which hurts more. It's bad knowing that you are going through a difficult experience without the person you have chosen to spend the rest of your life with. It's also bad knowing that the person you've chosen to share your life with is going through a difficult time without you.

The difficulties I just mentioned were there two years ago when my wife was in Afghanistan. Those same difficulties are also there today. I can't honestly say that I feel them any more strongly now than I did then. I'm just finding them harder to deal with.

The pain of separation is harder to cope with now than it was when my wife was in Afghanistan not because the pain itself has changed - it hasn't - but because the situation that she is in is so very different.

When my wife was in Afghanistan, I knew she was doing something worthwhile. The stories that she sent back about providing medical care in villages that hadn't seen a doctor in years, or about helping the local teaching hospital get back on its feet helped. It helped more than I can explain. I'm proud of my wife and what she does - that's a given, but when I saw pictures of her providing medical care to people who had never seen a doctor (much less a female one), I knew that the sacrifice that she was making (and the sacrifice that I was making) were helping to fix specific problems in a specific place. That makes a huge difference.

This time, with her in Iraq, I don't have that comfort. I don't have the comfort of knowing why she is where she is. I don't know what her presence there (instead of here) is accomplishing. I don't know what the hell it is expected to accomplish. I listen to what the president says. I listen to his claims about what this war is for, but they make no sense. In part, that's probably because I'm cursed with a memory that's good enough that I remember what he was saying last week, last month, last year, and when this whole asinine escapade started. I can see how his stupid little excuses have changed over time, and I can't manage to make myself forget about the old ones.

I'm angry right now. I'm very angry, but I don't have any effective target for the anger. It's not my wife's fault that she is where she is. I do blame the president, but I don't really know how much of this was his idea and how much came from others in his administration. I dislike him intensely - I loathe him - but there's little satisfaction in getting angry at someone who neither knows nor cares that you are alive.

I try my best to block out the anger and the hate and the rage, but it doesn't work. All that really happens is that I try to ignore what's going on, and that means that my wife - who isn't to blame - doesn't get as much support from me as she should, because I'm so busy trying to deal with my own little problems. It also means that from time to time she catches the side effects of my anger.

And that, of course, just widens the gap that separates us. And that makes me even more angry and frustrated than I was to start with. And the spiral just continues.