The Emotional Rollercoaster of Field Training

Field training arrived again and man was I not excited. But it is what it is, it’s an necessary evil of Army life. So began what I thought would be 29 days apart, but it was more challenging than I expected. But there was fun thrown in!

More Than a Military Spouse
Pumpkin carving party with my friends resulted in these gorgeous creations (mine is the Boo! one in the middle). Photo by Jessica Hall.

So why so challenging? I always have hated goodbyes, and was terrible at it when James and I were dating long distance but it continues to this day. So first challenge for me was saying goodbye, and then doing it again because guess who came home only 4 days later for a day? Yep. The husband. To get some supplies for the battalion. We said goodbye the following day at lunch only to have him come home late at night to go back to Yakima in the morning bright and early. Then 2 weeks later, I got woken up by him for another 36-hour supply run, only days before he was home for good. So yeah, a bit of an emotional rollercoaster right there.

Now minus that part, I had some fun really! I will admit that there were moments that I missed James of course but I couldn’t let it get me all the way down. Some highlights:

I went to a beautiful wedding of my co-worker. She is one of the sweetest people and I’m just so happy she found such a great guy! It’s hard to go to weddings solo but James had just been home so he was still fresh on my mind. I danced and enjoyed hanging out with my coworkers, a few songs reminded me of James, but overall – I had a great time! 

I was able to have girls nights! Yes, I have these every so often but it’s nice to have them and not worry about going home early. I also had some Army activities like a FRG get together and Spouses Club welcome. It was really nice to see a lot of people that I hadn’t seen in awhile. It made me realize that I’ve kinda been staying home a lot more than I thought and busier with work and school. I am making it a goal to go to these things more often, and work on making plans with a lot of these ladies!

I definitely watched way too much TV and did not read enough for class. But I definitely think that goes back to me not being able to go to bed early without James prodding me so he can get enough sleep. And the house is just a bit too quiet for my liking with nothing on. Also, I did some baking and cleaned out the freezer. So I was sorta productive…

Calling Field Training a roller coaster may be a bit of a stretch now that I look back. In fact, it actually flew by. I kept busy which is key to making it through these times apart in my opinion. I wish I could say that being apart gets easier but it’s hard in different ways every time. We will see what happens next time but hoping it’ll pass by quickly again.

How do you deal with times apart? Do you find that they drag or go by quickly?

3 Replies to “The Emotional Rollercoaster of Field Training”

  1. Im lucky that I wasn’t with my husband when he deployed because we are attached at the hip now! idk why it seems like such a big deal, I had a boyfriend for two years before him that I dealt really well with being apart when he was deployed and training..differentrelationships are different I guess! The couple times my husband and I have been apart for a month or so at a time (the first when I came home to Oregon for Singh and the last this past year when I enlisted) it definitely took some adjusting! The worst part was probably sleeping at night. Merovingian definitely helped and I think it was. Little easier because every time we’ve been apart has been me leaving somewhere so i was busy with what I had to do rather than being the one left at home. When I go to bmt and deployments the future will probably be a little raspberries than hI’m as well for this reason. I just hope because he’s already been through the military walk of life that it will be easier for him!

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