5 emotions that characterize redeployment
I think we covered the sustainment stage pretty well. So, let's move on to the redeployment phase. I had never heard the term redeployment until watching Army Wives. So, I don't know if this is a standard term across the board, only applies to the Army, or is just a term used by military officials. Regardless, it is defined as the month before the service member is scheduled to return home.
Scheduled is, of course, the keyword in that sentence. Deployments get extended all the time, even up until the last minute. On the same day my husband's departure date was set, another group from a different branch on that base had just gotten extended for another six months. And while, from my understanding, a redeployment means that orders have officially been cut to go home, it isn't unheard of for orders to change.
On Army wives, this looked like the service member getting official orders to return home. They would call home, and their spouses would be surprised and excited by the news. My only picture of redeployment is from my husband's first (and only) deployment, where he went to the same place for the same amount of time as everyone in his career field has done for the last twenty years. It wasn't surprising when he got his official return date because it was only three days after the one we had gotten when we found out about the deployment a year prior. Of course, I was still upset that it was later than initially planned, but I know that level of initial preciseness is pretty unusual. In his case, the whole squadron came and went as one group and was replaced by a new squadron about two weeks before he actually left. In other cases, though, deployments happen in smaller groups, so the replacements aren't as cyclical.
Redeployment is an exciting time; hopefully, we only go through it once per deployment. I know orders can always be extended last minute, and if they are extended more than a few weeks, it can be easy to feel like we are sitting in limbo for way longer than intended. The end of deployment is a dream come true, and like any dream coming true, the time immediately before can bring a flurry of emotions.
1. Anticipation
I remember the countdown clock feeling massive in my life, not necessarily in a bad way. It felt like when I was a child waiting for my friend to come over for a play date. I checked the clock constantly, waiting for it to say exactly 2 p.m.; every minute felt like an eternity. But there is something better about this anticipation when it's positive because the countdown brings joy rather than pain.
2. Excitement
I hope that we are all excited for the deployment to end. There are some more significant issues to sort out if we aren't. Generally speaking, though, it is exciting thinking about everything we can related to the homecoming. We get to figure out what to wear, where to eat, what to do first and every single missed moment that we get to make up for.
3. Apprehension
It can be nerve-wracking to think about those first moments, as well. No matter how much we communicate during a deployment or how great those conversations were, we can feel really nervous about that reunion moment. There are a lot of warnings out there about the reintegration stage, which made me feel more anxious about the homecoming, even though they weren't things that necessarily applied to my marriage. I worried about us getting sick of each other after spending so much time apart, and I also worried that I had forgotten how to kiss during those five months (both of which did not happen).
4. Energetic Anxiety
This is essentially nesting, although I've only heard that term in relation to preparing for a baby. It's when we can't sit still. We have all this nervous energy that needs to get out in some way. Many people rage clean to purge their emotions when a deployment begins. We can do the opposite at the end by feverously preparing our house for homecoming. I know, for me, this meant that outside of cleaning the house, I aggressively decorated for Christmas and bought every little thing I could think of that my husband might need when he got home. Sitting still and relaxing on the couch just wasn't an option during this time.
5. Confusion
This can be a hard time to make decisions. Both big and small decisions can be confusing when it feels like everything in our lives will change in less than four weeks. We can choose to put something off, but we risk missing out on something by waiting until the last minute. Making the same decisions we have made over the deployment can feel harder when our spouse is about to return home. We have to figure out how to do things together that we may not have done over the deployment, and this limbo time can make preparing the adjustment feel even more confusing.
All of these emotions are valid. And other other ones we may be feeling are, too. Deployments are big life-changing things, and the end of a deployment is the same. Change can be scary and overwhelming and exciting and thrilling. Often, we don't know what to expect.
Even during the redeployment stage, life goes on. We have to find a way to function within that time. We have to keep the family going, and we have to keep fighting for our dreams. Everything that makes the deployment stage complex reappears in the redeployment phase. Even if we feel the inverse of a lot of those emotions, and the overall time feels very positive, we can still end up halting our progress on a lot of things by getting too caught up in that time. It may just be a month, but when it comes to our life and our dreams, that time is too precious not to use it how we want to.