Sudden Death Matches and When She Is Fierce Speaks

Last week I walked around in a little bit of a haze.

The whole working 30 hours a week plus keeping a house that was used to having mom home is starting to wear thin.

Dh left for a week as a pre-course to his upcoming 6 week training this spring.

I planned and booked my flights next month for a necessary work trip.  Which means, for the first time ever I will be leaving Dh with the kids overnight.  For a week.

Then I learned that my trip meant I will be away for the National Day of Honour for Afghanistan, and it started to weigh heavy that I won’t be around.  I’ve always been available, all the time, anytime, for my husband.  But this time I won’t be.

And he doesn’t care.  He doesn’t see things like ‘Days of Honour’ as being for anyone other than those who are gone. And he isn’t at all concerned that I won’t be around for one.

I care.
I so care.

School is wrapping up soon.
Drama is in Running Club which means, well, so am I.
Freckles is starting every day to remind me more and more that he is almost a teenager.
Monster had just barely transitioned to being used to Dh away when Dh came home. So that I can then go away.  And then Dh will leave again.

The whole time I thought:
This week. 
I got this week.
I could do this week with my hands tied behind my back.

About part way through the week I was a puddle. 

I was a stress case with 3 jobs and too many kids, sure I would show up to the teacher conference in running clothes, a skirt to Jiu Jitsu and my Gi to the Board meeting.

I’ve never been good at pretending I have it together.

This Saturday, I am speaking at the Invisible Ribbon Gala in Trenton as their Guest Speaker.
It’s just a 15 minutes long talk about being a military family.
It’s not a big deal.

Except that it’s She Is Fierce that has been asked to speak.  

Not Kim.

It’s the blog writer and military family advocate with the website and facebook page and the carefully worded stories that is expected to be sharing to a room full of special guests and donors.

Not the self-conscious, over talking, fidgety and slightly neurotic 5 foot tall spaz that will need to cleverly hide herself behind that self-confident blogger before she gets on stage.

My heart is still processing what the right response is to our country’s role ending in Afghanistan’s war.

My head is still working out what words would possibly sum up what it looks like to be our family.
Because we are just an average family.
An average, run-of-the-mill war-weary military family.
And I don’t want that to look like more or less than what it is.

And when I do find words, they come out all at once in this jumble of contradictions that all ends up meaning that I have no idea what I’m talking about.

I feel so passionately about having the opportunity to share what life looks like this side of the war for families who have lived it for more than a decade.

But words are all starting to sound like gibberish when I try to get them out.

– You know what I heard a lot of this past week in Jiu Jitsu?

‘Kim.

Relax.’

Because I’m all tensed up in this ball like somehow this has become TO THE DEATH and breathing is all of a sudden optional.

And my partner, he is relying on training and waiting until the right time for the right move, and I’m busy using up all my energy getting nowhere.

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