I used to think that being a military spouse was hard. The deployments, the moving, the constant separations. The trying to find a job that was meaningful and fulfilling that paid. The expectations placed on me by the “military institution” and, yes, unknowingly by my peers.
Raising kids mostly by myself. Doing everything, mostly without a spouse to share the burden (and the joys). I used to think that being a military spouse was hard until I wasn’t one anymore. The day my husband told me he no longer wanted to be married, I realized that there was something harder than being a military spouse for so many years. And that was being a divorced military spouse.
We are the invisible spouses and children. Often demonized and forgotten. There are a growing number of us who are 10, 15, 20, 25 year military spouses who find themselves in the most unthinkable of situations.
Our years of moving left us without the financial means that our civilian peers may (or may not) have to be a single parent. Our years of moving have left us hundreds of miles away from family. Our military life has meant friendships based on a shared existence that no longer exists. Our children are stripped of their identity as we often pull up stakes and return “home”; embarrassed and confused. The heroic images in the media don’t mirror their reality. And Veteran’s Day now means an empty seat at school.
When all of the “hard” was over, we were supposed to move into our years of being together as a family again. I was supposed to get my husband back. We were supposed to finally be together. But someone else will get the golden years. Someone who doesn’t carry the scars and baggage of the years before…
I wish I could trooper through divorce with the “can-do” spirit that I had as a military spouse; but that energy is gone. The conversations I have with a growing list of friends and peers in my situation tells me there are many of us. The devastation of the loss is deep. The stories I have heard…
I ask that those military spouses who “could never imagine it would happen to me,” imagine for a moment if it happened to you. I didn’t think that I would find myself here; nor did the many women that I have talked to over the past year. Yes, I get it. Society is full of divorce. And someone will trot out the statistics that the military “doesn’t have more divorce than the average of society.” Dear friend, there is a difference.
We were the force behind the force. We were the spouses who stepped up to hold down the homefront post 9/11. We were the generation who willingly walked away from careers that were thriving. We gave up the future that our educations had offered to us. We stepped into volunteer roles that supported our warriors and grew non-profits in the military space that were bigger than any previous generation. We built careers and businesses based on our being military spouses. We did deployment after deployment after deployment. We pulled ourselves taller as our spouses returned with alcohol and drug problems. With PTSD and depression. And, yes, they came home with the desire to “just come home and not have to worry about anything,” even when we never had that luxury, and we sadly accepted this situation.
I often wonder about the military spouses who fold-in so much as to avoid what I am now facing…
