Wifedom Has Gone To My Ass

The Silent Support Army, A Series About My Life As A War Veterans Wife – May 2018

Recently I discovered ‘The Military Wife and Mom’ on Facebook. A ready made virtual community of military wives from around the globe that I feel more connected to than the many thousands around Australia. I have never interacted with anyone on this site but I have found I don’t need to. The daily posts about military ‘wifedom’ capture the very essence of what it is to be wedded to a uniform and they make me laugh out loud when I feel like crying or better still, when I don’t feel anything at all.

My love and I are fast approaching our two-year anniversary. Our two-year anniversary of living the MWD-U (Married With Dependents – Unaccompanied) life that is. Come August 6^th it will be two years since his uniform changed from khaki to white and his tools of trade changed from a rifle to a ship. We always knew it was going to be a period of our lives that would bring with it additional layers of stress but nothing really prepares you for the reality. Last week I found myself comparing MWD-U with a deployment. Weighing up the pros and cons of each circumstance and working out which one is worse. I tried to evaluate each one individually and then against each other and decided that even though a deployment means that your love is target practice for the enemy, MWDU is worse! You see, deployments are finite, they have an end date and with each passing day you get a little closer to seeing their face and holding them in your arms again. MWD-U, well it just never seems to end and the closer you get to the end of a posting cycle, the greater the anxiety gets as you wait with baited breath to see if you will once again be residing in the same postcode or if you will stay put and he will go to another base, possibly on the other side of the country.

Yes my friends, military wifedom has gone to my ass!!

Like every other business, posting cycles are driven by demand for capability. All of which is fair enough, I mean, let’s be real, this is what Defence is all about but nothing can prepare you for the endless disruption and impact on your life living apart brings. Turning off ones emotions so as to not feel the constant pull in directions of coming and going seems like a relatively simple thing to do right??? Well, apparently the brain has a different opinion and when you try and short change it out of feeling sad or vulnerable it takes it’s feelings out on your ass! Yes my friends, military wifedom has gone to my ass!!

I see you all scratching your heads trying to work out what that means, so let me explain. You see, it’s the little things that you don’t think about when you commit to the whole ‘see ya on weekends’ arrangement and one of those is the adhoc eating habits that you develop and the inbound 10 kilos that is going straight to your butt! I can’t remember the last time I did a weekly shop for groceries. I seem be dropping by the supermarket or corner store daily to pick up ‘just enough’ to get me by until my love comes home. Naturally when he comes home, there is nothing in the house to eat, so we eat out…and so, just like that, you step off and place both feet squarely on the merry-go-round of poor eating habits.

Growing up, our family certainly didn’t have it all. Eating out was reserved for very special occasions and these special events meant you were allowed to indulge in the foods that were special and ‘special’ looked like all the things you shouldn’t eat! Sweet delights, succulent meats dripping in butter and deep fried delights… Mmmmm Chippies… Anyhow, what I have grown to realise is that like it or not, the practice of eating out which equals permission to eat naughty delights is so deeply woven into my DNA that whenever I eat out I have this uncontrollable urge to indulge in finger licking yumminess. Now that wouldn’t be such an issues if I was only eating out every now and then. The reality is I travel a lot for work and so naturally, I eat out a lot, which for me, is like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey. It’s like a feast of fabulousness that it takes an amazing amount will power to abstain from.

I’ve been exploring options to help me manage my little ‘situation’ until life returns to level of normality when my loved returns home for his new posting. I am subscribing to two things; I’m going to do a little bit of hypnotherapy to see if I can adjust my subconscious addiction devilish delights and support my new found neural pathways with a subscription to ‘light-n-easy’. I realise I need regain a level of eating order in my life and for someone who works long hours and doesn’t have the energy to cook when they get home, I need to get all the help I can to get regain some control over my life.

So here goes nothing, stick with me friends. I’ll keep you updated along the way.