A Totally Unofficial (and Slightly Unhinged) Guide to Deployment
For military spouses currently spiraling, snack-hoarding, or yelling at inanimate objects.
Look, I’m not here to give you a calm, color-coded guide on how to “thrive” during deployment. No ma’am. I’m here to give you the real survival tactics. The stuff no one puts in the brochures or pamphlets they hand out with a forced smile and a tote bag.
This is deployment, unfiltered. And if you're anything like me, you're somewhere between “I’m fine” and “I just cried because a sandwich reminded me of him.”
Lower your standards. Then kick them into the abyss.
You think you’re gonna meal prep, deep clean, and start a new hobby? That’s cute.
Reality check:
You’ll eat chips for dinner (out of the bag).
You’ll forget how long it’s been since you washed your hair.
You’ll build a strong emotional connection with your DoorDash driver.
This isn’t self-care season. It’s survival season. Welcome to it.
Talking to yourself is the new normal.
No, you're not losing it. (Okay, you might be a little.)
But when the silence in your house is so loud it echoes, you’ll find yourself muttering things like:
“I should probably do laundry today.”
“Did I feed the cat or just think about feeding the cat?”
“Honestly, this sink might be gaslighting me.”
Congratulations. You're now both the lead actor and the narrator in your own emotionally unstable indie film.
You’ll cry about the dumbest stuff imaginable.
Not just the heartfelt letters. Not just the official goodbye.
But:
A dog in a commercial.
A sad song in Target.
The fact that you bought snacks to share and now have no one to share them with so you're just eating all of them and crying.
It’s fine. You’re fine.
(But seriously, keep tissues in every room. And maybe the freezer.)
You will hate your phone more than you’ve ever hated anything.
Let’s play Communication Roulette:
Green bubble? Panic.
No text for 12 hours? Existential crisis.
A message that just says “busy, love you”? Complete mental spiral followed by rereading it 27 times for hidden meaning.
Pro tip: never expect a FaceTime call. That way when one does happen, it feels like you just got backstage passes to Beyoncé.
Your pets will become your emotional support roommates.
Your cat? Now your therapist.
Your dog? MVP of cuddle duty.
Your fish? Silent judgment, 24/7.
You’ll start giving your pets full monologues, asking them questions like “Should I rewatch New Girl or finally fold the laundry?” and they will respond with nothing but passive stares. Icons.
Random home projects will turn into deeply emotional quests.
That squeaky cabinet? Now your nemesis.
That lightbulb that burned out? A metaphor for your mental health.
You'll end up in Home Depot at 8 PM on a Tuesday, rage-Googling "how to caulk a thing??" while contemplating buying a power tool just to feel something.
Spoiler: you’ll fix something and feel like an absolute warrior. Then you’ll find something else broken and start the cycle over.
Laughing and losing it can happen at the same time.
It’s totally normal to:
Cry over a sock that still smells like your spouse
Then burst out laughing five minutes later because your cat just fell off the counter trying to steal your toast
Deployment emotions don’t follow a schedule. You can grieve, rage, snack, and laugh all in one afternoon. That’s called ✨range✨, babe.
🧃 Final Thoughts From the Edge
If you’re currently spiraling, yelling at the Wi-Fi, eating frozen waffles at 10 PM while Googling “deployment hacks that actually work,” just know: you’re not alone. You’re part of a very chaotic, very strong, very resilient club of unhinged warriors.
You don’t have to have it all together. You don’t even have to fold your laundry.
You just have to survive — one sarcastic internal monologue, one grocery store cry, and one feral snack binge at a time.
