Today, I was talking to a very wise military wife whose husband is a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. They’ve been married for about 15 years, and she is no stranger to deployment.
Here’s what she told me:

‘The difference between a wife whose husband is deployed, and a widow or a divorced wife is that the deployment wife has no place to put her anger. A divorced wife can say ‘that guy was a jerk!’ and a widow can say ‘how could you leave me?’ They can have closure. But the wife enduring a deployment cannot put her anger on her husband – it will kill their marraige. And yet, you still have anger. Eventually, though, your husband will come home and you can’t be angry with him because in your heart of hearts, you support what he is doing.’

It took me the rest of the day to process it, because I’ve been guilty of my share of anger.

I was angry at first because I didn’t see the deployment coming. Angry it was happening to us. I was mad because I quit my job and sold my house in Georgia to move to Oregon with Paul, and now he was leaving me there alone. I was angry every time during that year that I wanted to call him and couldn’t; every time I had a problem and he wasn’t there; every time I was lonely and missed him so desparately.

These days, I am angry because my husband is home and there are days I still miss him. Angry because I am not the same woman and he is not the same man as we were before the deployment. Frustrated because this whole experience is so much harder than I thought it would be. Because I don’t know when it will get easier.

But even when I am really, really mad, I am never mad at Paul. (well, almost never.) I’m not even mad at the war, or the military. I am angry at the deployment. Talk about a hard enemy to fight!

And my friend is right – even on my worst days, I am proud of my husband. Proud of his service. Proud of his mission. And if he chose to return to Afghanistan tomorrow, I would be there to see him off. I would send care packages. And I would be here waiting.

But I couldn’t promise that I would never be angry.

Read more about coping with Deployment Anger.