The Body Has A Mind Of Its Own

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When I looked ahead and anticipated how I could best THRIVE through deployment I started making lists of things I could do or had to look forward to during that time. I thought if I stayed busy it would help the time go by. I thought if I have all this free time I should accomplish some big things. I thought if I was this free of most of my major commitments I should do some big, fantastic things.

On my list were: spend time with friends, try to plan something with someone every week, go out on weekends, visit my family, take classes, start a business, get super fit. Oh, I had plenty to keep myself busy and to keep my mind off all the scary worries of deployment.

I thought if I had my mind in the right place, I would be able to accomplish anything I wanted to. I learned very quickly that it would not be that easy. Once I drove home from saying goodbye to Mr. Hart and watching his plane fly away, I don't remember much that first week. I remember unloading the car and sleeping a lot. I was exhausted. The anxiety alone was exhausting but add in all we had to accomplish in those last few days and it was easy to see why I crashed when I got back. I didn't leave the house much, didn't even get dressed the first few days. But this was sort of the case the first day or two of every big trip Mr. Hart had left on. Once all the getting him out the door had happened, I usually took a couple of days to get back to normal.

I quickly realized that getting up to speed this time was not going to be a day or two but a bit longer. We had been through an extraordinarily stressful time the eight weeks leading up to his deployment that entailed much more than just getting him ready to go. I also quickly learned that even though I wanted to go gangbusters accomplishing things that my body had a completely different idea. While I was dealing with the conscious stress pretty well, my body was going through all the stress in it's own way. And I had very little control over it.

Within days I was sick. Then I couldn't sleep. I wouldn't fall asleep until 1 or 2 in the morning. Then if anything woke me up, I could not go back to sleep.That usually happened between four and five in the morning. On top of that I started having nightmares. You might think I was having nightmares about something happening to Mr. Hart, but I didn't. I was having nightmares about what would happen if everything came crumbling down around me here at home. In my waking hours I realized that although I didn't feel it consciously, my subconscious was very actively freaking out. While I tried to talk to my subconscious, it had to work through all the stress and worry in it's own way and time. This was all a huge surprise to me. I thought a positive attitude could overcome anything in my life.

The lack of sleep began to mess with my head when I was conscious. I fumbled over simple sentences, couldn't remember things like where I put my keys and I forgot about things on the calendar. I locked myself out of the house, car or both several times in the first weeks he was gone. In my entire life I have probably locked myself out of a car or house only three times. This was beginning to be a regular event for me.

While I was suffering from the body's will to control itself in its own way, I started benefiting from it's regulatory and balancing abilities. Eventually I was so tired that I started sleeping a lot. At some point my body had to quit fighting itself and shut down. It was amazing how quickly I began to feel better, my head was clearer and I started feeling like my old self.

I learned a big lesson those weeks that despite our best plans and expectations, sometimes we can't know what we can expect from our bodies. They need time, attention and nurturing and that doesn't always fit into our plans - especially in pre-deployment mode. It was a big lesson in learning to go with the flow of things. I was not going to be super woman right out of the gates. I was mourning a lot of things and accepting many scary new possibilities into my life. There was a huge amount of responsibility suddenly heaped on my shoulders. My body and my subconscious needed time to catch up.

Once I relaxed and allowed that to happen, with a little time things got much better. But it took a good eight weeks to fully pass through this phase. This is definitely something I didn't expect. Something else I didn't expect was that this would come back in varying cycles again and again. I would continue to experience bouts of sleeplessness followed by spells of intense tiredness and needing to sleep more than normal.  Family problems, preparing for R&R, recovering from R&R, times I knew he was traveling, moments like these often lead to a return to this crazy cycle but in much smaller spells thank goodness.

I hope if you are reading this and facing deployment or any other big upheavals in your regular daily life that you will give your mind, body and spirit time to get caught up with each other and adjust over time. Don't be too hard on yourself but listen to yourself and do what it is you feel you need to keep things in balance as much as possible. I send you my prayers for the challenges in your journey and for an abundance of good health and well-being.