The Pain of Deployment

And just like that, Jeremy has left on deployment.

I'm not sure how I could still be producing tears, but I am.  Last week he came home saying thanks to the hoop-la in the middle east, he'd be leaving a week and a half early.  Doesn't sound like much to anyone else, I'm sure, but that week and a half meant so much to me.  To us.  To our family. 

Ruby is only 3 weeks old.  She hasn't smiled her first smile.  Her Daddy won't see the real thing for seven months.  Of everything we knew he was going to miss, I was at least comforted that he'd leave knowing his baby had smiled at him, hopefully a hand full of times, by 5 weeks old.  But at 3 weeks 4 days... not a real smile to be had. 

At least he was still home for her Baptism.

Kyra is devastated.  Absolutely, inconsolably, devastated.  She cries deep, heaving sobs and wishes we were back at our old house when Daddy didn't have to leave. 

Lydia cries because Daddy is gone, but it's the same cry she gives when he'd go to the grocery store without her.  The cry a 3 year old gives when they want to have things their way.

I cry for all that he will miss.  It's the hardest part of deployment, for me, knowing all that I get to see, do and witness... and all that he will miss. 

To me, he repeated, again and again, "You gonna be alright without me?"  He worries, so much, that I might fall down that same rabbit hole of postpartum depression I did with Kyra, except there will be no one here to save me from myself.  I tried reassuring him that I was fine.  That I will be fine.  But I'm not sure he fully believed me.  The abundance of tears and unwillingness to fake a smile had everything to do with it, I'm sure. 

I'm sad.  Plane and simple.  I never wanted to have a baby and three weeks later say goodbye to both my best friend and my husband in the same week.  It was almost too much for me as I continued to loose it, again and again, on the kids. 

Shameful of how I didn't cope, I'm trying to make this first week alone as busy as possible.  Apple picking at the orchard today, overnight trip to visit Ruby's namesake tomorrow.  And while I'm not sure what to do with myself the rest of the week, I'm sure I'll think of something.  It seems I'm at my best in the company of others.  Be it a much needed distraction or the unwillingness to crumble in front of others. 

That's right where my children need me right now, Kyra especially, at my best.