I waited almost 14 months to get home. I planned every week carefully. But what happens when the sadness that you thought would go away as soon as you got home doesn’t go away? What happens when the support group that you thought you would have doesn’t exist and you end up more alone than you were while deployed?
My Struggles
Being deployed is kind of like being pregnant. Everyone has a million questions for you and always wants to talk to you. Then as soon as the baby comes (or in this case as soon as you return home), crickets. You find yourself, with just yourself.
I had it all planned. I would stay at my cousin’s with my daughter for 3-4 weeks after I got back. This would allow me to get back into the groove of being a mom and would provide me with help from my family until I adjusted back to my old life. Everyone else had their own plans. It seemed that they all couldn’t wait for me to get back so that they could unleash the burden of my little one. I say this because as soon as I came back, almost everyone disappeared.
Instead of having help and decompressing I found myself in a highly stressful environment, was constantly uncomfortable, and never having a moment of mental rest. All that I wondered every day, as I spent long hours alone with my daughter was, “Millions of service members return home unfit to be left with a child. No one is even concerned as to whether I may hurt her or myself.”
I struggled every single day and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. My cousin told me one night that his job is to help people recover from trauma or problems that result from being under high levels of stress for extended periods of time. I asked, “How can you help strangers but not try to help me?” “Go to the VA.”
I left for my own home the day of my daughters last medical appointment in that town thinking, I can do bad all by myself.
My Daughter’s Struggles
The day that I returned, my daughter kept touching my face and saying, “I’m so happy that you’re back. My little cousin informed me later that day that my two-year-old told her that she didn’t think that I was ever coming back.
Every night for the first month that I was home, my daughter screamed in her sleep. “Mommy” was always one of the things that she screamed. All of her pretend scenarios with her toys involved the Mommy toy leaving. She refused to go back to daycare, though she missed her friends and she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Occasionally, she would make statements like, “I won’t do that because that’s why you left me before,” or “Remember that time when you got lost?” It took about month before she would play with other children at the park. She kept saying that she wanted her friends from her old school.
After a month and a half, I started working and she began daycare. Every day that I picked her, she said, “You came back,” as though she was surprised. As time has gone by and with much re-enforcement, she tells me that she believes that I will come back. I know that she doesn’t. If I’m ever late, she always admits that she didn’t think that I was coming.
Road to Recovery
I want to tell you that when I moved into my new house that things got better, but honestly, I don’t know if things will ever be the same. When we first moved in, I spent as much time as I could doing activities with my daughter, but I had a business to launch by the first week of July and a whole house that needed to be put together.
So in between painting my new home, unpacking my daughters things, refurbishing my cabinets, deep cleaning, and remodeling my kitchen, I took my daughter on bike rides, to the park, to watch tennis, colored, read books, and cooked with her.
Every day, whenever I look at her and she’s not smiling, something deep inside of me tells me that it’s my fault that she isn’t smiling. Before I left, she was always happy, now her happiness comes and goes. Perhaps that’s just what happens as we grown older, as babies we have no thoughts and therefore no sadness, but she’s still a baby. But instead of her only concern being which toy should I play with next, she wonders whether or not Mommy will abandon her again.
6 months home and I still struggle EVERY DAY with the thought that I’m a horrible mom because I abandoned her. I often wonder if anyone else ever feels the same, but our stories, the stories of the military mom, remain unheard.
