What nobody tells you about becoming a military spouse at 40:
We’re all mad here…
“‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked. ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’ ‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice. ‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’”
-Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
…or at least leaving traces of our sanity behind
The Cat was right. You have to be a little mad to enter this world of military life. But the mad ones make it through.
Down the Rabbit Hole
“Happy Birthday to you…Happy Birthday to you…Happy Birthday, dear Selena…”
We’re sitting in a steakhouse in South Carolina. My new in-laws, new husband, and my ten-year-old daughter are all clapping along with the servers. Other diners join in and yell “Happy Birthday!!!” from across the room.
I’m 40, and I’ve fallen through Alice’s rabbit hole. Am I mad? I look over at my rabbit, a.k.a. my husband.
“Damn, I am.”
* * *
It isn’t long before we’re packing the car to move from South Carolina to our new place of residence. Of course, I soon learn “our residence” is actually “his duty station,” and we aren’t “moving”; we’re “PCS-ing.” …or is it PSC-ing? F*ck, this is complicated.
Sixteen hours later, we pull into the Louisiana hotel where we’ll be living until the Army has room for us in one of the houses inside the barbed wire fence and scarily uniformed-people-with-guns guarded gate. I’m told this exclusive land is called “on post.” Overwhelmed, I suggest we go explore the local area and get some dinner. Off post, (if that’s how I’m supposed to refer to the regular town that doesn’t require a special ID card to visit), unfortunately, is less than inspiring.
Why in the world did I give up the shores of Hawaiʻi for this town that hasn’t seen an update since 1980? I look at my husband again and then turn to see my daughter’s smile of adventure. I shake my head in disbelief but feel the ghost of a grin turn up the corners of my lips. As long as I have them, I’ll be okay.
The Loudest Quiet
It’s August of 2017—two years since that move—and I open the door to our on-post housing. The loudest quiet rolls over me. Consumes me. I close the door quickly so the neighbors don’t hear me wail as I crumble to the floor.
Just a week before, I’d come back to Louisiana alone after a visit back home to Hawaiʻi with my daughter didn’t go as I’d anticipated. While we were walking around our beautiful island, she had asked to see what living with her dad could be like. I was shocked. The question was both unexpected and devastating. I don’t know how to be only a weekend mom, a holidays-only mom. I was built to be an everyday mom. Leaving my girl—my heart—behind while I stepped onto a plane several time zones away? My tears fall faster. I don’t know if I can do this.
And now? A week later, when I’ve just dropped my husband off for his year-long deployment to Korea? How could this possibly not destroy me? We had decided not to accept an “accompanied tour,” even though it would mean having to endure this separation. Getting to live with him in Korea would come at the cost of turning his deployment into a two-year stint. The sooner he got back, the faster he could retire. That 20-year mark was so close we could taste it. Now, though…
*Lick, Lick, Lick*
My sweet puppy, Coco. She’s glad I’ve finally come home. It breaks my heart to see her looking for the others that belong to her, but I can tell she’s still content to have her alpha mom back. Her body wags a follow me! as she prances to the back door to be let out to pee.
I follow because I don’t know what else to do in this lonely vacuum of a house. While she marks every bit of the small backyard, I look around at the dining room and am suddenly viewing echoes of our lives lived within these four walls. Ghost scenes of homework being done at the table. My daughter making cookies for the first time in our kitchen. My favorite people in the whole world joking and bonding. I swear I can hear her pencil scratching, smell the melting chocolate chips, feel the reverberation of her laughter as she teases her stepdad with something like: “You fawwt a lot.”
These traces of shared life are too much, and I start sobbing again.
*Lick, Lick, Lick.*
Coco’s back inside and licking my leg. Feed me. My body goes into autopilot. One bowl gets filled with food and the other with water. I watch her try to decide which one she wants first. Her indecision almost makes me smile. Almost.
Exhausted and dazed, I crawl into bed with our pup. Before oblivion can pull me under, critical thoughts circle like sharks scenting blood. You picked this life, they whisper.
“I picked this life,” I mumble, drifting off into the sea of tears that salt my pillow. Morning comes. Seconds flow into minutes, into hours, into days. My on-post friends try to keep me busy, sending messages to my husband about how I’m doing “really.” It’s bittersweet to be around them. Their kids rode the bus with mine, went to school with her, rode bikes up and down our street together. I keep reflexively counting their pack, thinking there’s one missing…and then I feel like shrinking so I can disappear. Am I even still a mom here?
Without a Trace
That thought drives me mad and finds me packing the dog in the car and driving. I don’t really drive here. It makes me nervous. Nothing feels familiar, even after two years.
I drive further than I have before by myself. No one knows where I am. I don’t care, really. Why does it matter? I’m alone. I keep driving, not caring if I run out of gas or if something terrible happens to me.
We finally stop at the rose garden, and Coco sniffs around curiously.
She stops to be petted when a young couple on a date says, “Your dog is so cuteeee.”
I force a smile and a conversation for which I have nothing left.
I don’t want to talk to anyone else, so we pop back in the car to drive on to another area. We find a lake. I let her sniff her way through the calling scent cards left by other animals. Her tongue hangs out, and a doggie smile lights her face. Coco’s excitement for today’s adventure would normally be contagious, but I’ve been walking with very different energy.
If we make it through this day, then so be it. And we do.
*Paw. Paw. Paw.*
“Sorry, girl. Didn’t mean to stop. Let’s go home.”
* * *
It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve come home from visiting my daughter for the holidays.
My eyes open. Sleeping was my getaway. My phone is pinging with text notifications, and Coco is trying to get my attention.
“We’re okay”
“Call me”
“Did you hear??”
Emergency Alert
BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
Thirty-eight minutes after this message goes out to the island of Oahu, it’s corrected and confirmed as a false alarm and not a real threat. I call my daughter immediately and don’t get through. I dial my mom right after, and she eases my nerves, assuring me everyone is okay and that if she hears from her granddaughter who’s only ten minutes away, she’ll tell her to have her dad call me.
I don’t know if it’s a blessing I slept through those initial notifications because it brings me one notch higher on a scale of anxiety I’ve never before experienced. Maybe I should have taken those pills my therapist suggested.
*Paw. Paw. Paw.*
“Come on, girl. I know you have to pee.”
* * *
“My God, it’s beautiful!” I say to my Mom as we both stare at Niagara Falls. My sister and her kids are ahead taking photos from a different viewpoint. I smile, but there’s an edge of sadness on my lips because their cousin should be running with them. She’s not here. I’m not fully here.
“Aunty, come here! Look at it from here!” I smile more brightly at my niece and head her way.
My mom walks beside me. She knows how sad I’ve been and pats my shoulder. “I’m glad you’re coming in a couple weeks for her 6th grade graduation. She misses you.”
“Auntyyyyy, comeeee!”
The Window Seat
*Paw. Paw. Paw.*
“Coco…stop it.” She’s beginning to hate my suitcase. She knows it means I’ll be gone again. “I’ll be back before you know it; don’t be sad!”
*Lick. Lick. Lick.* My poor buddy.
My plane lands, and my sister and nephew are waiting at curbside. We head to my daughter’s school just in time before the bell rings. It’s been so long since I’ve stood outside her classroom door. I wave at her teacher who doesn’t really know me. I’m the “holiday mom.” I blink away a tear that wants to form by just thinking that.
My daughter bursts out of the room and hugs me! The tear I just held back has companions now, but smiling ones.
“Mamaaaaa!!”
The sweetest sound.
Days later, as I prepare to head to family court, my daughter’s therapist tells me, “She’s ready to go home with you, Mom. She needs to be with you.”
Just like that, the first real breath I’ve taken since I opened that door a year ago to the “loud quiet” of an empty house fills my lungs.
* * *
My husband is about to be home from Korea, and I’m on yet another Pacific flight—this time to meet him. There’s another difference this time, as well. The window seat next to me isn’t filled by a stranger. She’s there. It’s her favorite seat. My baby girl. With her headphones on, her iPad playing YouTube videos. She looks up at me and smiles. I smile back. All traces of that edge of sadness dissolved.
I grab her hand and hold it tight.
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SELENA CONMACKIE is a Hawaiʻi-raised Army spouse who came to this life at 40 with a full heart, a stubborn sense of home, and absolutely no idea what PCS meant. She spent 8 years as an active duty military spouse before her husband completed his 24 years of service—following her soldier from the shores of Hawaiʻi to Louisiana to Texas, navigating deployments, distance, and the particular madness of starting over more than once.
Now three years into life as a veteran spouse, she’s still figuring out what normal looks like…and writing about it honestly. A mom, a storyteller, and a self-proclaimed late bloomer to military life, she writes about the messy, beautiful, and quietly devastating moments that don’t make it into the brochure. You can find her storytelling community over at her Substack, Let’s Meet for Coffee. Selena first connected with VSP while helping shine a light on their programs and has adored this nonprofit and its mission ever since. She currently shares her life in Texas with her husband, her daughter, and Coco—who is 10 this year and still very much in charge.
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Veterans Spouse Project (VSP) is the only nonprofit arts organization in the nation working to give voice to the experiences of military spouses through theatre and creative arts. Learn more about how to share, connect, listen, and create with us in your community.
