Monday, October 25, 2010
Flashback
I'm at a workshop with builders and the flood project over the need to protect this community from flooding and where in the hell are we going to get the $525M to $1.6B project. Tension is high, making me feel closer to the "action" here than I was in Kabul. Here I sit, clicking and typing, killing the Taliban one click at a time...wait!...who is the enemy here?
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Forever Moment
I've been sort of hiding out, trying to pretend like time is not passing, and trying to stay frozen in the moments when I arrived home from my deployment, but before I found out about my dad. It was about 30 minutes of heaven, and I want to stay in that moment forever. It was the small amount of time that I got to revel in the successful completion of the hardest 6 months of my life, and in the jaw dropping experience that it was.
I saw an old friend Friday night and as we chatted, he realized that I am "fragile" (his words), and he chastised me for not reaching out. I told him that I can't talk about my deployment because all I can think of is the jaw dropping moment when my husband told me he was gone. It is almost as if these two jaw dropping experiences canceled each other out. If I deny one, the other is automatically denied.
Somehow, I've got to separate them in my mind. I need to revel in the deployment. I need to share those experiences and I need to find a way to do it. I wonder if this is my ego talking? Why such need? This brings me to the meaningful moment--perhaps 30 minutes or so--I had with Sarah and Jessica at the Bagram Air terminal when I first arrived in Afghanistan. The two women provided me with personal resolve to accept the fact that I was in Afghanistan and that I needed to pull it together and get a job done, for them, for the women of Afghanistan, for the women at home. I was probably "fragile" at that moment in time because I had not planned on going to Afghanistan when I left home, and it brought about a certain amount of anxiety.
The need to tell the story about the tragedy in Afghanistan is real. The need to tell the story about the tragedy that is happening in our world is real (terrorism). The true story of Afghanistan is not being told in western media. Stories from people who have been there are the truth. And it must be told.
Thus, my new blog is started.
I saw an old friend Friday night and as we chatted, he realized that I am "fragile" (his words), and he chastised me for not reaching out. I told him that I can't talk about my deployment because all I can think of is the jaw dropping moment when my husband told me he was gone. It is almost as if these two jaw dropping experiences canceled each other out. If I deny one, the other is automatically denied.
Somehow, I've got to separate them in my mind. I need to revel in the deployment. I need to share those experiences and I need to find a way to do it. I wonder if this is my ego talking? Why such need? This brings me to the meaningful moment--perhaps 30 minutes or so--I had with Sarah and Jessica at the Bagram Air terminal when I first arrived in Afghanistan. The two women provided me with personal resolve to accept the fact that I was in Afghanistan and that I needed to pull it together and get a job done, for them, for the women of Afghanistan, for the women at home. I was probably "fragile" at that moment in time because I had not planned on going to Afghanistan when I left home, and it brought about a certain amount of anxiety.
The need to tell the story about the tragedy in Afghanistan is real. The need to tell the story about the tragedy that is happening in our world is real (terrorism). The true story of Afghanistan is not being told in western media. Stories from people who have been there are the truth. And it must be told.
Thus, my new blog is started.
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