Manager of the Universe

I'll admit it:. I have control issues. It's kind of a problem sometimes. I was thinking about this in my detox bath tonight. The 2 year old I nanny for has the flu, and the flu is kind of a big deal this year if you haven't noticed. He threw up on me yesterday, and I went to work and took care of him today for 8 hours (and got thrown up on again). Subsequently, in the last 24 hours I've had 3 cups of Echinacea Immune Support tea, 3 oranges, Super C juice, chicken noodle soup, Airborn tablets in my water, anti-oxidant Vitamin Water Zero, slept 10 hours, taken a detox bath, taken 2 multivitamins, stocked up on Pepto Bismol tablets, and I will probably have more Airborn or Echinacea tea before I get a good night's sleep tonight. I've also sent alerts to my friends that I have plans with this weekend warning them that I may have to cancel due to illness. Oh, and I've used a boat load of hand sanitizer....and I've Lysoled myself. It occured to me tonight while laying in a tub of my own toxins that I may still get the flu. I get it every year despite my yearly flu shot and all my efforts.

I have had the need to control things since I was a child. When I was six I remember spending hours just organizing my stuffed animals. Occasionally, my need to control is beneficial. I am highly organized, a good employee, and in someone else's crisis I can step in a manage a situation quite well. However, it is in the situations I can't control that I tend to go into over drive (anxiety) or shut down (depression).

As you can imagine, desiring to control things can be a problem when you are a military wife. The military is in control. And I must say, I can be far better organized and more efficient than the military, at times. This last year has been a special challenge. We have been waiting on orders for my husband to deploy, and things in our lives - big things - were contingent upon those orders. Of course, now that we have them there is the issue that orders change! They say in the military "you don't know when you are leaving til you are gone, you don't know where you are going til you get there, and you don't know when you will be back until you are home." Well isn't that just freaking awesome.

Preparing for the last deployment, I got my first real taste of the fact that I am not in control of life. While having a lovely panic attack in the Commanding Officer's office with a military therapist (this is how I spent Family Day, by the way), we got to the root of the issue. The therapist informed me that I am not the Manager of the Universe. As you can imagine, this news came as quite a shock. I may have even argued about why I should, in fact, be Manager of the Universe. It took the first six months of James being in Kuwait for my to get my life together, after it falling apart because James left and I had lost control of everything. Let's just say, if I were Manager of the Universe, I would have been promptly fired and informed that I would not be getting a recommendation for my next job.

In my attempts to super-charge my immune system and stave off the flu, I realized that all the herbs in the world can't stop the virus if nature just decides I need to get the flu. Just like I can't control the issues in the world, and the fact that my husband's job is to do what the government calls him to do, whenever they decide to call him to do it. And both those things kinda suck. I don't want to get the flu, and I want to have a say in deployments. However, life does not care about my plans. Letting go of my need to control is one of my biggest issues in my life, and in being a military wife. I can help myself cope by planning, making lists, preparing my friends, sharing my feelings, attending support groups, and so on. But Murphy's Law always applies to deployments. The day after James' leaves, one of the dogs will get lose, I will get a flat tire, the garbage disposal will break, I will lose my keys, and I have no idea what kind of emotional state I may be in in the midst of all that. The only thing I can really do is roll with it and do the best I can in that moment with what I have. I can't plan for everything. And I'll make it through.