Duty, and the Real Problem with the Military

I KNEW Scott wanted to join the military long before we got married. I think that resolved is the wrong word, but resigned at least gets at the ambivalence one might feel when the person she loves more than life says "I want to serve my country." Loving someone means anything but holding him back from what he might wish for himself.

Upon joining the military (though I've never gone through basic training, I am [unfortunately] as much a member of the military as Scott is [as will our unborn children be someday], I knew what we were "getting ourselves into." Some people talk about how recruiters conned/fooled them into x, y, or z. Scott and I are pretty smart though, and I NEVER had any misconceived notions about our life (because in marriage, two lives become one) in the military. I was (and I still believe to this day I am) fully prepared for the fact that my husband would have to be deployed. (In no way do I mean to suggest that somehow a deployment to South Korea is akin to deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. I simply mean that distance is distance.) I think that this is a sacrifice, but one that we CHOSE, not one that was somehow forced upon us.

Though I anticipated much of this life, I was never prepared for the physical nature of what absence causes. Much of the work I do is about embodiment and issues surrounding the body, and yet, I was never ready for the PROFOUND physical pain that absence causes. I can pay bills, cook food, fix things in the house: these are all daily aspects of life I have been able to cope with quite well. It is the physical nature of absence that I find unbearable. The term "gut wrenching" is NOT metaphorical or symbolic. It is the description of the body under a certain type of stress, the manifestation of lacking. (This is most likely why an attempt to aid an "other" fails--no matter the similarities, there is a physical individuality that cannot be resolved...this is where sentimental identification fails.)

I often find that I cannot control bodily responses (if the mind trumps body in that dichotomy, why is it so much easier to confine?). And the military cannot provide spouses, dependents, etc, with ways to resolve their embodied situated-ness. This issue is less a problem of the military and more a problem of humanity. We cannot erase physical pain.