Thursday, June 30, 2011

Peripatetic

One of the things about R's job this deployment for which I am grateful is that he doesn't move around a lot. As an engineer, he gets to basically stay in one spot until the project is finished, and because he's not currently attached to a combat engineer unit, those spots are relatively safe and secure.

Not that he hasn't had the other experience, too. He was in Iraq in 2003, and those conditions - no matter what the soldier's job - were.... hmm, well, enough has been said on that subject elsewhere. My point being that when it comes to the logistics of this deployment, I am well aware of how lucky I am.

Spoiled, some might say. I do so little worrying, that when a seemingly innocuous change occurs in R's position, I am alarmingly freaked out by my own anxiety.

Recently, he had to travel some 1300 miles from one relatively safe location to another relatively safe location. It wasn't the locations (both familiar) which bothered me - it was that 1300 miles in between.

How would he be traveling? It's never a non-stop trip, where would he be stopping? Would those stops even be voluntary? Was the mode of transport safe? What if his transport was shot at? What if it broke down? What if 101 other possible scenarios happened during travel time?

Seriously? It's not even the first time this deployment he's covered those same 1300 miles! Get. A. Grip.

I'm not a worrier - much too lazy, basically. I have a firm belief in controlling what you can control and letting the rest sort itself out. (This belief was a hard won result of unlearning control-freak tendencies. Oh yes, I've seen the other side, AND IT AIN'T PRETTY.) This allows me to acknowledge the basic bitchiness of fate without taking it personally.

But worrying about R over those 1300 miles made me feel very vulnerable. Like maybe Fate was the popular kid in middle school and she was alternately laughing at me or threatening me. (I survived that, too, so I'm not sure why that makes a good analogy, except that it's a craptacular feeling.)

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