Anxiety kept me awake last night. Anxiety kept my husband awake last night.
Weeks of following the news and watching events slowly unfold on social media have led up to this moment: Russia has officially begun their invasion of Ukraine.
My husband is not attached to a unit that would be one of the first to deploy. In fact, he hasn't even been put on standby, but that doesn't change the feeling of my stomach dropping when I got the news. That doesn't change the fact that he was obsessively checking the updates last night once it hit the news. The complete change in mood was felt in the room.
The future is unpredictable. We don't know if he will be leaving. We don't know anything. In fact, we don't really want to talk about it. I'm sure someone in both of our families will end up calling or texting at some point. I'm surprised they haven't already. We don't want to hear, "is he going?" Especially not now when we have a constant lingering feeling of anxiety about not knowing what's going to happen. Nothing is going to help us feel better, not even a, "at least he's not being deployed."
The truth is, even if your intentions are pure, which I'm sure they are, these phone calls and texts just remind us that there is that chance of him being called in to leave or put on standby. We'd rather not think about it or be reminded of it. We want our life to feel as normal as possible, even if the reality is that it is not normal, especially not now.
As of now, no he's not leaving, and maybe we can be content with the answer we have, but we aren't. We know that usually we don't know things until last minute anyways. Things could change at any minute, any hour of the day.
Trust me, once we hear anything you would be contacted soon after. Right now all you can do is wait, just as we are.
