Here it Goes Again

Blah... I hate it when Jon leaves. It's just a little pre-deployment workup and he's only gone for a couple weeks, but when I drop him off again and watch him say goodbye to our son, who holds his hands up in his car seat and says, "Up!", it just train wrecks my composure. It doesn't help that all the way back in the car, Nate incessantly asks for his Daddy. Knife twist.

So I had corn dogs for lunch and a guilt-induced salad for dinner. With banana pudding. Because, you know, I had a salad. So it's okay.

All those, "He's gone, he's gone and he's never coming back" feelings resurface. Depression rings my doorbell and asks to come inside. He wants banana pudding, too. He likes helping me eat dessert. We're kind of buddies that way. Except he never gets fat. So we can't be friends. I consider letting him in, but make him wait at the door. I share banana pudding with him anyway before I tell him to go away. He's ugly and stupid and I'm not being friends with him this time. Besides, I ate all the pudding.

I hate deployments. I hate the need for composure that goes hand in hand with the need to not stuff my feelings, because then I'll explode. Because I will. It's not pretty. It's uglier than depression-induced banana pudding binges. Well... almost. But I never balance at a happy medium between the two. I either break down and pout or I straighten my back and go on with life in a "Screw you, Navy! You don't ruin MY life" kind of emotionless coma. It's all a bit ridiculous. It leaves me exhausted and I crawl onto the couch at night and, entirely humbled by my inability to act like what I think grown-ups are supposed to act like, I ask God, again, to show me, again, how the Gospel is still saving me. From my self pity, from my fear and from my childish heart. And then there is peace.

Peace and also cocoa puffs, because I finished the banana pudding.