Archive for » October, 2008 «

Purpose
29
October
by TouchedByMadness

Why do you blog?

I ask myself this question every now and then. The answer varies.

I’ve blogged because I thought it would be cool to try. I’ve blogged to encourage myself to hone my writing skills. I’ve blogged solely to amuse my readers. I’ve blogged to get “discovered.” I’ve blogged because I’ve had nothing better to do.

Then I write a post like yesterday’s and I read it over and over and say, “No, really . . . why are you blogging this?”

And I check my email. And I check my comments. And I check my email again.

And then I realize the answer.

I blog because I want someone to care.

I want someone to know that in a little town in New England there is a young woman who lives with two cats that shred her toilet paper and a soldier who loves the movie Scent of a Woman.

I want someone to understand that even though they aren’t terribly important in the grand scheme of things, these people exist and feel.

And I want someone to give a damn.

I want to believe that in my moments of sadness and vulnerability I can share a piece of me and someone will actually read it instead of quickly moving on to more humorous and entertaining blogs. That someday someone will sigh when I sigh or ache when I ache and take the time to say, “Hi, I know you’re out there.”

Category: Random  10 Comments
Hooah
28
October
by TouchedByMadness

Last night the Captain watched Platoon.

This morning I woke up with a wicked headache.

As a person acutely aware of how much time my beloved is kept away from me, I’ve noticed that in recent months battle assemblies have grown longer, sometimes starting on Fridays, and generally require “being in the field” for the duration. Teleconferences have become more numerous and especially lengthy, ensuring that all the local restaurants are closed by the time the Captain gets off the phone.

While I’m no reader of tea leaves, I decided that can’t be good.

The Captain has since explained to me that his unit is in “ready year one,” which means that they are up for possible deployment. While he regularly assures me that he hasn’t heard anything about them actually heading back to Iraq (although he admits he’s surprised they haven’t been sent already), the fact that any day now he could be handed a mobilization order is enough to cause me to clench my jaw in my sleep and give myself a constant string of migraines.

When I first met the Captain years ago, I was hesitant to date him. I believe it takes a certain inner strength and selflessness to spend your life with a soldier. I possess neither. He’s willing to sacrifice everything for his country, up to and including his life. Hell, I mope through drill weekends. While it’s not a stretch for me to imagine that al-Qaeda is a bigger threat than my going to bed without someone to snuggle with for a few nights, it’s hard for me to get all “We’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way” about it.

Actually, I’ve been pretty miserable. There’s always a nagging worry in the back of my mind. I ask him horrible questions about the odds of him getting blown to bits or the likelihood that he’ll still love me when he gets back. My favorite diversions no longer interest me because in the big picture, none of it really seems to matter. All I can do is wait and prepare myself and attempt to learn to be proud that he’s ready and willing to head off to war.

The Captain told me that if he gets deployed, he’ll propose to me before he gets sent over. So what’s supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life will likely deteriorate into a giant sob fest because now I expect a ring comes with a mobilization order. There’s one special day shot to hell. Fuck you, terrorists.

I can’t imagine the lives of the women whose soldiers have already done four or five tours. I can’t imagine the hardships of mothers raising children whose fathers are thousands of miles away. I can’t imagine the grief of the women who get neatly folded flags back instead of the men who left.

Will I become one of them?

This is not the life I expected, but I guess it’s the life I chose.

Category: Random  6 Comments
Something Wicked This Way Comes
26
October
by TouchedByMadness

I hate Halloween.

This declaration seems to shock people. They stare at me wide-eyed, their mouths agape, and eventually sputter out some version of, “But . . . why?”

I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I think spending the vast majority of my childhood Halloweens in a darkened house with the shades drawn while being hissed at to keep quiet lest I want to see a brick come through the window might have something to do with it.

Just a guess.

In those days “trick-or-treating” meant that my parents dressed us up in the same damn clown costumes as we wore the previous year and drove us to our uncle’s house, our grandparents’ house, the houses of two great-aunts, and then home again to sit huddled in the unlit living room and protect our own residence. We were, of course, never allowed to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood, even when we promised to skip the crack house across the street. All things considered, I suppose my parents weren’t entirely paranoid when they worried our neighbors were exactly the type of people who hide razor blades in Milky Way bars.

I was nearly ten years old when I finally experienced a proper Halloween. By then I harbored so much anxiety about the holiday that it was pretty much ruined for me anyway.

Nowadays, my enthusiasm runs only as deep as a love for candy corn goes.

Category: Blogging Is Cheaper Than Therapy, Rants  One Comment
Nag
11
October
by TouchedByMadness

I will be twenty-eight years old next month.

I have been living with the Captain for a year.

We have been dating for nearly four years.

Three women who sit in my corner of the building at work have gotten married in the last year and a half.

Two of the three other women that sit in my cubicle area are currently pregnant.

All of these women starting families are about my age. I have cats.

With all of these contributing factors in play, I’m afraid I’m going to become that woman. You know the one. The one who with every breath reminds her man (and anyone who will listen) about her naked finger. Whenever I feel the jealousy and worry and impatience rising up in the back of my mind, I try to remind myself that I’m happy and things will happen when they will. But as easy-going and rational as I attempt to be, I swear women are hard-wired to pursue the ring as much as men are driven to chase ass.

I’d like to think that I’m above all that. I remember well how I laughed when my cousin’s wife not only picked out her engagement ring, but regularly visited the jeweler to make sure he was consistently making payments on it. Of course at the time I thought, That will never be me.

That was before I realized that women have a breaking point. That eventually their girlish fantasies of the many romantic ways their beloved may propose sour. Their well-rehearsed, “Why, this is all so sudden!” becomes “What the fuck are you waiting for?!”

Yes, we become snarling, manipulative harpies hell-bent on getting that diamond out of you.

And then . . . and then . . . what?

Then I guess we bitch about our married lives and the burden of children and how we miss our single days.

Category: Blogging Is Cheaper Than Therapy, Random, Rants, Relationships  8 Comments
Occupied
09
October
by TouchedByMadness

“Stacey, they keep you busier than a one-armed paper hanger around here.”

Yes. Yes, they do.

Category: Random  2 Comments