Where I Am

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my two-year-old’s room, a clean diaper in one hand and a…well, let’s skip that part. One of the older kids came running down the hall to the bedroom door, urgently calling “Mommy!” and proceeding to detail something Very Important that needed my immediate attention (like a hitting offense or lack of clean underwear or that blue and green make this crazy blue-green color called teal or something). But instead of hearing the Very Important Declaration, I got stuck in this Twilight Zone-esque moment where I found myself in a daze thinking, “They’re calling me 'Mommy'. I'm the mom! When did that happen?! Who decided I should be in charge?” The moment ended as quickly as it began, and I went back to diapering a fresh backside while attending to the big kid crisis of the moment (I still can’t remember what it was). But in my nanosecond of bizarre altered-reality state, I came to grips with the fact that I’ve spent a whole lot of life going, doing, and trying to make meaning out of things without really processing them fully. [Or at all.]

The realization of that moment hit me again in a new way a few days later when I was talking to an Army friend. Like me, she is now sitting in the relative discomfort of the civilian world, a world that seems wholely disinterested and hopelessly detached from the military experiences that formed us. During our conversation, it came out that though our periods of service weren't always wrought with overwhelming happiness or contentment, they were an integral part of the person we had each become. Neither of us wanted to broadcast our past identity, but we agreed that it was hard to know that most of the world would pass us by every day, never knowing the intimate truth and importance of what defined us.

The conversation and realization helped me arrive at a sort of freedom I hadn't really grasped before.

You see, two years ago today I officially hung up my uniform and donned my best pair of mom jeans.

I thought I was beyond ready to move on from the unforgiving schedule and demands and family separation of Army life in favor of mothering my children full-time. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I knew it would be better. It was both--so much harder than I ever imagined and far more worthwhile than I'd ever thought possible. But I didn't think that my past really had any business moving forward with me, even though it kept creeping up on me.

After a year, I'd convinced myself that I should be reflecting on and blogging about the positives I’d gleaned from my short Army career and the lessons I’d learned after 365 days in my new dream job as a full-time mom. But as I waded through a meager mental list of “good points,” my thoughts were still tinged with a fair dose of snark and bitterness. The redeeming life lessons I felt I should share were still lost on me. So I refrained.

As year two approached, I considered saying that I’d finally attained a seemingly stable glide path as a full-time mom and that I could finally reflect maturely on the high points of Army life. But things began to turn all upside-down and backwards again a few weeks ago, and that bizarre 'is this really happening? Is this really me?' moment in my son's room drove it home hard: I don’t know if that “full transition” as I’ve imagined it in the past will ever be my immediate reality, because this thing called life--with all its good, bad, and indifferent--keeps happening.

I don't know that I'll ever have enough positives to force me to make meaning or fully understand the five years of service that have so drastically defined me. I don't know that I'll ever be able to reconcile the fact that the same organization that led me to my beloved husband and, by proxy, my children, also kept me from my family during so many significant moments.

But that's okay. The little puzzle piece of self-awareness that slid into place as I talked to my friend a few weeks ago helped me see it so much more clearly. I haven't let myself live outside the confines I constructed for myself in my head--the beliefs that wanting others to know about my experiences was prideful, or that I must find some good or some meaning in order to approve of some aspect of my life. But the truth is that I am who I am, positive memories and 'lessons learned' or not.

The truth is, I have lived in a world of experiences so fundamentally different from the “real” world that it has left an indelible mark on my soul. I know what the inner circle is like. I know that the public would rather embrace the hologram of military prestige and honor based on a long euphemistic history over the stark reality of the human condition in its most stressed and stretched and calloused form. I know that from my place on the outskirts of my inner circle, there are countless smaller circles of those who have seen and done more, things that I myself will never understand and can only see from a distance. There are some things too real and raw and sacred for even my husband and I to discuss—though we have worn matching uniforms, certain things can only be shared with the ones who stood side by side at a marked time, witnessing the same sacrosanct finality of humanity contrasted with the counter-intuitive and clinical indifference of continuing the mission. It is not a reality one can just announce to the unhearing world. But once it has been lived, it also cannot be unlived. One cannot leave unchanged. And though I left my military experience freely, unapologetically, enthusiastically—I was certainly, inarguably, changed.

So even without the positives or divine revelations to help me definitively say "I was supposed to be in the Army because [insert multitude of unknowns]," I'm finding that it's okay for me to admit that those experiences I may never fully understand still shaped me to my core. And it's okay for me to wish others could recognize it, too. It's true with my military experiences, it's true with my experiences as a wife and now a mom--and I'm sure it will be true with any other life-altering events that will fundamentally change me.

I chastised myself recently for feeling what I thought was the same self-absorbed "pride" in reference to my motherhood; specifically one night when I made a quick run to the grocery store sans kids. I positioned the diapers on top of everything to make sure all the people staring at my cart would know that I wasn't just some random woman grabbing milk. No, see, I'm a mom! I wanted those diapers to shout to the world. It's ridiculous when I think about it--why should I assume others are sizing me up when I spend zero shopping time analyzing their carts and making silly conclusions about their lives?

But maybe I should. Allow myself to consider what their experiences might be, that is. Because this human desire to freely live our full identity is present on so many different levels in each of us. It would be so much easier if our stories could somehow be known without having to go through the tediousness or pain of rehashing the details, similar to the sign campaign that made its rounds last year. So maybe I should remind myself to wonder more about the other moms on the playground and make allowances in my head for them to also be accomplished linguists or biochemists (true stories) instead of making generalizations based on a sunhat or stroller.

Ultimately, as I explore my own desire to be known, I’ve discovered that it’s not necessarily pride that drives it. It's precisely because my identity is so intermingled with my role as a mother that I feel almost naked without my children by my side at the grocery store to affirm it. It's because my past is so intermingled with my present that I grit my teeth when filling out forms that demand my profession and I must write "homemaker" instead of citing the military. At the root of it is the identity crisis of experiences that beg to be acknowledged. When these things happen, a part of me protests, “but this is not all of who I am! There is more!” When I react with bewilderment while changing a diaper as the child in front of me calls me "Mommy," it is the long-lost daughter in me surfacing to ask, When did I grow up? When did the life I always imagined become a reality? It's because the daughter who turned into a young woman overnight never took the time she deserved to process it all.

Today, two years later, I acknowledge that I am still made up of equal parts daughter and mother and wife and soldier. None of these parts of me is any less significant than the last, and all of these affect me still, whether or not I walk around in a uniform with a rank or wear a badge with a title.

This acknowledgement helps me comprehend why the veterans I saw yesterday on Memorial Day plead for their own identity to be recognized by wearing caps and patches detailing their service in Korea and Vietnam. They were once walking targets in highly criticized campaigns; but good or bad, right or wrong, those experiences defined them and changed them forever. And for the longest time there was no one who wanted to acknowledge it; they were simply swept under the rug, the world willing them to mute their identities.

It helps me realize that other moms out there don't want me to put them in a box anymore than I want to be confined--they want the same chance I do to be defined by their whole selves, whether they are working or at home, whether I know their previous careers and interests and hobbies and life-altering experiences or not. It helps me remember that I am not the only one with a life experience that has shaped me significantly, and I really do need to be more gentle than I might think necessary.

It helps me understand that understanding takes time. Whether it has been one year or two or ten, I can still appreciate the good and be frustrated by the bad and shake my head at the confusion and shrug my shoulders at the unknown. It is not written in stone that some arbitrary anniversary date must be the day that I make sense of it all and proclaim it "good." Qualifying the 'why' behind it is God's job, not mine.

So here you have me--two years later, who I am, right where I am. Standing in the very real intersection of Chaos and Uncertainty and Self-Realization and Decision-making and Hope. Enjoying the joys and rewards, bumbling through the stresses and questions [and occasional disbelief] of my new role as I continue to transition, while still feeling the whispers of my old life in so many ways. But I’ve been buoyed by the fact that when looking back, the view has gotten a little clearer. Finally, the processing part that I couldn't grasp for so long is starting to take hold. The self-awareness is deepening. I have such a long, long, way to go (don't we all?) but it feels freeing to not need all the answers...and know that two years later, I'm still on my way.