Back from R&R

Sunday, 8 June 2008
1800

Well, I am back from R&R and mostly recovered from jet lag, but not from the leave itself.

I bet the four people worldwide who were reading this blog have officially given up, since it’s been over two months since I made an entry in it! Oh well – it just emphasizes some observations about myself that I made a bit earlier. I have turned more inward towards the end of my time here. Things don’t seem as new and exciting, and I just don’t feel like making new entries as much anymore, perhaps since my thoughts seem likely to interest nobody but myself.

Another major part of it is the fact that I’ve had other external concerns that have dominated my attention outside of work, and there is only so much of me to go around. The largest of these concerns is that since the beginning of the year I’ve really tried to focus more on getting ILE-CC completed. (ILE-CC is Intermediate Level Education, Common Core, more widely known as Command and General Staff College). I have to get this done to get promoted, and the clock is ticking, so it’s been on my mind more and more lately. I’m now within striking distance of completion, but more on that later.

It felt strange coming back here. On the one hand, I didn’t really want to come back because my leave was too short and I wanted to spend more time with my family. On the other hand, I felt a sense of excitement and anticipation because I only have about seven weeks left until I start out-processing to go home for good. So coming back here was the beginning of the end of my tour. There was also a strange sense of comfort and familiarity - I have been here so long that it feels like home in its own bizarre way. That in itself tells me it’s time to go!

While I enjoyed most of my time on leave, it was anything but relaxing. Although I did have a list of things that I needed to while I was home, I had envisioned a relaxing, leisurely time including walks in the woods, quiet time with my kids, and just generally recharging my batteries. It didn’t work out that way at all.

First of all, I started off by doing almost everything they tell you not to do in the briefings they give when you prepare to travel back to CONUS. They even have a Chaplain come in and talk about family relationships and reintegration. Returning service members have a lot of problems getting reintegrated to their families, and so the Army takes the time to warn you and try to get you ready for what will happen.

One of the main things they told us was not to try to do everything on the first weekend. Take it easy, get over the jet lag, relax, and just take it all in as you get used to being with your family again. I totally violated this advice, mainly because of the timing of my leave to coincide with my son’s graduation from high school. Almost as soon as I got back on Friday night, family started arriving in town, and it was a hectic schedule of visits, meals, parties, etc. I wanted to see everyone and everyone wanted to see me, so by the beginning of the following week I was more exhausted than when I first arrived home after the flight!

I also had a lot of trouble with the reintegration to my family, since there really wasn’t yet any integration to start with. Since coming back to Kuwait last fall, my townhouse had been closed and my property moved into storage. As a result, I do not have a home to “return” to, in the sense that it is a comfortable and familiar place where I have (or had) established routines and “rules of engagement”. I was staying at a friend's home, and was a newcomer to their home and their ways of doing things. This kind of transition is hard enough under normal circumstances, but coupled with being home on leave it was very, very difficult. I didn’t have “my own space”, did not have any of my familiar surroundings, and found it hard to adjust to the change. For about the first week or week and a half I was pretty hard to live with, and it caused a lot of stress.

My list of “things to do” was pretty demanding. Unfortunately, they were all things that simply had to be done while I was physically at home, and which could not wait until the end of my tour. They included visits to my doctor and chiropractor, a visit to court to straighten out some records, a visit to the bank to straighten out an investment account that was messed up, a visit to the U of M ROTC department to see about a teaching job, digging through my property storage area to find highly specialized reference books for one of my ILE-CC papers, and going through those books to collect facts, statistics, and quotes for the paper so I wouldn’t have to carry all the books back to Kuwait. Although I tried to do these things when everyone was at work or in school, they still ended up taking time away from visiting with my family.

So, on balance I did everything they said not to do – front-loaded the leave with a rush of family events, walked into a new living situation like a bull in a china shop, and tried to cram a year’s worth of necessary errands and activities into two weeks.

Now that the leave is over and I’m back here, we’re left feeling sad and lonely, as though we didn’t have time to breathe, much less relax and spend time together.

The only saving grace is that this was not a mid-tour leave, but is towards the end of my tour. In two months I’ll be home, and will be much better able to relax and get settled in. I am hoping that this time spent together on my leave will have taught us some important lessons, and that when I return we’ll have a better understanding and be able to integrate much more gracefully and happily.

Meanwhile it’s back to work, both on my day-to-day military responsibilities and on my military education. Today I finished and submitted the paper I worked on during my leave. Five down, three to go…..


Mood: Hopeful
Music: Silence