Jessica Scott

In David Finkle’s The Good Soldiers, Finkle describes a ‘bad news bucket”, an emotional coping cache that, once filled, puts a soldier near the breaking point. According to Finkle, who heard of the idea from Gen Petraus (I believe) soldiers need good news in order to drain the bad news they carry around inside them.

When I read Finkle’s description, I thought, this was it exactly.  There were days in Iraq where I simply couldn’t handle anything else, that I was barely holding on and needed to get away and pull it back together so that I could continue.

I did not expect this once I returned home but apparently, I have my own version of the bad news bucket: the mommy box. I discovered very early on in my deployment that I needed to stay busy in order to keep my mind on the tasks at hand and not sit and mope about my kids. They were happy, they were healthy and they were in my mom’s more than capable hands. I didn’t need to worry.

What I was doing, apparently, was shoving everything inside the mommy box and closing the lid. I shut those emotions down and ignored them.

Except that sometimes, the box got too full. Like on my oldest’s first day of school. My husband and I both agree that they hardest day on this deployment was missing that event. Birthdays we could recreate. Anniversaries, we would ignore. But the first day of school is something we can’t get back and we don’t get a do over.

But having put everything aside for the duration, I fully expected to come home and simply go back to normal. I did not expect to be crying the first weekend back with the kids every day for four days. It seemed like I couldn’t stop. And I also discovered that drinking makes the mommy box even harder to handle.  Apparently, alcohol unleashes the flood of emotions that I’ve still got boxed up inside me.

I can sit back and pretend that everything is fine now that we’re all home, having hauled the entire family back from the diaspora but that would be lying to myself. I’m not fine but I am one hell of a lot better now that I’ve got my family back together. There are still a slew of emotions inside me that I still have to handle and I’m sure they’re going to leak out, a little at a time (because I’m not drinking anymore, but that’s another post).

The mommy box was set in a corner for an entire year. Now, I guess, it’s time to clean it out.

Tweet This Post

I’ve been home a few days now. I’ve been busy. Aside from the dead lizard in the bathroom, which I really enjoyed, I’ve been going non stop. Cleaning the house and getting things back to normal in my home is nearly a full time job. But I did take time for me, because as soon as I get the kids back, I no longer have me time. So I went and spent some time at Bobbi Brown and at the Loft and spent some time trying to learn how to be a girl again.

But here’s the problem. I’ve been a soldier all year long. That’s been who I am, aside from the folks I interact with in the online writing community, I’ve been around soldiers and that’s it.
It was easier.

I very nearly lost my temper today at a girl who was doing her best to cut my hair but despite her efforts was pretty much giving me a hatchet job. You’d think I would be a little more easy going about this, seeing how my hair has had a single style for the entire year. But as the length got shorter and shorter and the sides more and more uneven, I felt this tiny knot of anger growing inside me. She was trying but the harder she tried the worse it got and the bigger the knot grew.

Thankfully a more experienced hair stylist stepped in and salvaged it so I’m not bald.

But really? I was getting violently angry over.

A.

HAIR.

CUT.

WTF? This is something so beyond petty and inconsequential, I’m ashamed to even be writing about it. Everyone who knows me knows I’ve got a temper but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve strived to keep it more in check. This year has been more challenging and I’ll admit, I let it fly more often than I checked it.

But if I’m losing my temper (which I did not, thankfully. I paid and left without comment) about something so absolutely stupid as a bad hair cut, how on earth am I going to handle my kids? I mean, they’re babies. They’re not used to me and I’m not used to them.

So how am I going to handle this?

I’ll tell you, this is the most apprehensive I’ve been in a long time.

This isn’t a two week stint of R&R. This is it. I’m mommy, full time, go starting in less than a week and there’s no one to take the load off for me and my DH. We’re both coming back this time, not him with me adjusting to him coming home.

It’s going to be an interesting journey, that’s for sure.

Tweet This Post

I’ve developed a low tolerance for a lot of things since I’ve been back from Iraq, but something completely trivial is working my nerves.

People all across the country respect and admire soldiers and thank us for our service. While we’re just doing our jobs like everyone else, it’s still nice for people to recognize that we do something just a little out of the ordinary by just saying thank you. It’s a small thing, but it really means a lot.

Except, if you live in a military town, the rule is not thank you for your service, but familiarity breeds contempt. I’ve got a news flash for all you civilians that work on post and are put out by having to provide a service to us soldiers. Your job is here because of us. You don’t know where we’ve been or what we’ve encountered over in Iraq and Afghanistan. So when you walk by at 0758, refusing to make eye contact with me as I stand outside your office and refusing to open the door to even allow me and the three other soldiers inside where it was warm, remember that without us, you wouldn’t have a job.

I know that’s sounds bitchy and it is. My patience, like I’ve pointed out, is really low these days. But these women were completely engrossed in their conversation and were literally trying to pretend that there weren’t four of us outside, freezing our asses off and they couldn’t’ have been bothered to even open the door and let us in. They didn’t even have to serve us before they opened but a little common courtesy would have been nice. Especially considering it was 32 degrees.

Same thing happened at a local restaurant. This place was a chain and my hubby and I thought having a sit down breakfast would be nice. We waited, patiently. The restaurant was half empty but still, no one was coming to seat us. Then, when the hostess finally did start seating folks, she seated another couple first.

We left, neither of us having the patience to deal with basic lack of manners and basic customer service.

I know this sounds like I’m being petty and small and maybe I am. Maybe in a couple weeks, I’ll look back on this post and think, what the hell was I thinking. And please recognize, this is not an indictment of the whole town, but people in it who refuse to recognize that soldiers are people, not just numbers.

But right now, the rudeness and the refusal to recognize that soldiers are not just a uniform but a person by some of the people in the town and on the base I call home is disconcerting.

Tweet This Post