Why Rapunzel couldn't be a military wife.

Three weeks. Three measly weeks. Not 18 months. Not even the 8 months of the last one. He's been gone three teensy weeks. And this one has my hair falling out... literally.

I've racked my brain trying to understand what has me so frazzled that every shampoo leaves me panicked. Since we've been married, he's been deployed to Iraq twice, the first time my two sons were 19 months and 8 weeks old respectively. He's been to Afghanistan twice, the first time he left the very next day after we arrived in California to a home full of boxes and no school for the kids. Small stuff, No Problem.

This training exercise is less than five hours away, in the same state, and for a little over three weeks. And I'm counting the strands in my brush. Please, no more today.

The contrast is all it takes for me to see that the current strain of my military life cannot be viewed through the gargantuan lenses of war and deployment alone. Our military families are strained by what can barely be seen under the microscope. The uncertainty of which damned, accumulated stressor will the one that cracks open the hairline fissure revealing the nut inside. It's about believing we should steady ourselves for the big stuff, not sweating the small stuff, and finding ourselves knocked down anyway by no more than minutia.

I've climbed mountains unscathed, and just tripped over a pebble.

Maybe I should have noticed something was wrong when he was getting his gear ready and I felt nothing. Maybe I should have worried that leaving had become so ordinary it didn't even register. Maybe then I would have seen what I perilously mistook as my strength to handle separations was exactly the opposite. I was not immune to the pain, I am numb to it.

Sitting on the ground, I'd like to take a breather for a while. But I'm a military wife, I don't have time to stay down for long. In two months, we move overseas.

I crack a few achy joints standing up, dust off the dirt of self-pity, move on to pick up the spilled contents of my 'pack'. One by one, I pick up boxes, trinkets and tokens of experience. Each labeled: New Schools, New Housing, New Friends, Old Friends, New Church, Move Company, Fix Car, Fix House, Fix Kids. Fix me. (Wait, the last one is still missing.) Each item, no bigger than my hand, weighs a ton.

I desperately want to believe that military families are indeed much the same as our civilian counterparts. It's one glaring difference that gnaws at me. The density of our experiences are incomparable. What is someone else's 'once in a lifetime' event is easily my thrice. At some point, I lose track. I cannot, however, escape each iteration adding to the load.

And the weight is compounding.

I'll make it through this month of him gone. I'll make it through the next three weeks of him home before he leaves again for another 5 weeks of class. I'll make it through the move. I'll make sure the kids make it through the move. I'll wake up tomorrow, and the next. And I'll keep waking up.... until I make it through.

But please God, I'm too vain for this one. Please, please, God, let me make it through with a few locks left.