The blog prompt generator is getting weak. I think I have used all its creative juices and I have had to scour the interwebs for other prompt sites. Most of them suck so I feel like its slim pickins for topics that I feel good about.
Today the winner is, "Tell about a time when you felt out of place."
I have felt out of place a lot, but there is nothing that makes me feel so uncomfortable as I do anytime I am present at a military function or even just on government property.
When I met Travis he was fresh out of boot camp. This quality was "hot", not only because it meant he had like, a real job, but also because uniforms. I feel like I didn't think too much about it other than it meant I only saw him on weekends because he was stationed 5 hours away. Then we made a baby and I married him and even at that point, he was a SLACK ASS sailor, so his career choice really didn't effect me other than it was a paycheck that supported us both, awesome. All of this to say, it took a deployment or 5 and him tightening up his sailor game for me to really feel the effects of being a military wife. In fact, because it is all I have known as a wife it feels very natural and it is always odd when people make a big to do about it.
Anyways all of that to say, we are 12 years in this military family game and yet anytime I have to be on base or at a function, be it the commissary, doctor, a command BBQ, a Christmas party, a quick lunch delivery- whatever, I AM SO UNCOMFORTABLE there. I feel like I am on another planet full of people in matching outfits who have their own language and belief system. Weird alien people who are all working together like cogs in a clock and I am an unwanted interference. Even at "fun" functions where everyone is wearing clothes of their choice, I feel so incredibly out of place.
I think part of it is that what Travis does at work is separate from our life. I understand his literal job, and we talk about happenings at work, but really it is the only part of his life in which I am naturally excluded. Not only that, but it isn't just some desk job, it's a job where he potentially spends 6 plus months away from me and with those people. And who he is there, I know, is at least a little different from who he is at home. So maybe a part of it is that I feel like military personnel are all in a club that I don't get to be in and that I will never understand. Furthermore I stay home, so I don't have a piece of life separate from him and the kids which makes it harder to feel out the part of his life that is.
But even the other places. The doctor and grocery store that are full of other spouses- I don't even like those. I could never join any form of military wives anything because it all just feels so wrong to me.
I don't know why, it always has and I am okay with that. Till I have to participate in it, then I'm like a brace faced 6th grade boy at a school dance trying to talk to the girl he likes. Awkward. Uncomfortable. Probably over compensating.
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