Emotional Jet Lag

A friend of mine in Helsinki recently returned from a trip home to visit her father after surgery. She shared with me that, in State Department circles, there is an unwritten rule concerning returning home within 6 months of a deployment. They recommend against it because you haven’t yet fully put roots down in your new location and it makes it that much harder to do so if you travel home.

That made perfect sense to me. We had experienced that to a certain degree just by traveling to Paris last month. Paris is familiar, we speak the language, we know the culture. Not so, Helsinki. And yet, sometimes you don’t have a choice. Like when your best friend has a baby, and that baby needs major surgery a few days after birth.

I didn’t go into this international assignment with blinders on. I knew I was moving very, very far away from everyone I loved on this entire planet except for Matt, Gabriel & Lily. I knew that my grandmother was 103 and not likely to live to see my return to the US. I knew my best friend was pregnant. I knew my niece, a month old when I left, would grow and change so much before I got to see her again. I knew taking any type of emergency trip home would pose all kinds of financial and logistical challenges. And I worried about that. I grieved when I left my family and friends. I missed them like crazy. But I went anyway. And there’s guilt in that for me.

So when I got the phone call last week, I cursed. How could I not be there? My friend said, without any sort of irony, that she knew I’d be there if I still lived in Colorado. She was trying to tell me she understood why I wasn’t coming, but it was those exact words that made me turn around and book a ticket home. I was on a plane less than 48 hours later.

To say I’m glad I went would be to understate the necessity (for me, personally) of being there for her. And I was rewarded hugely for my visit, not only because I got to be of use instead of hanging out in Helsinki worrying, but because I got to hang with my friend’s daughter and get to know her in a way I never have before. Because I got to see my nieces and assure the three year old, when she asked me if her cousins were ever coming back from heaven, that we hadn’t died, merely moved to Finland.

It was a hugely draining week. Anyone who has been through major medical drama before knows what it’s like, waiting endlessly for news during procedures. Jumping up from our chairs in the waiting room every time the door cracks in case it’s the doctor or nurse. Wanting like hell to know how it’s going to turn out, but not getting that news for hours. Then for days. Eating hospital food and China Buffet until our guts hurt. Sleeping poorly or not at all. Not having any words for the horror of what was happening. Not knowing what to do to help. Knowing there was nothing I could do to help except be there.

Then it came time to leave and panic set in. Panic because I didn’t want to leave until I knew if the baby was going to be OK (as of this writing, he’s improving immensely and giving us all a lesson in the miracles of modern medicine, the strength of the human body, and the mysteries of the universe). Panic because I didn’t want to leave my family and friends again. The guilt flared like a match on dried tinder and that just contributed to the panic.

By the time I got to the airpot Sunday morning, I’m pretty sure I was in the midst of my first-ever panic attack. Heart racing, palms sweaty, stomach churning, I was getting sympathetic looks from people who I’m sure thought I was nervous about flying alone. In truth, this trip churned up all kinds of muck from the bottom of my mental pond and I’m embarrassed to admit that I spent a lot of my waking hours in Indianapolis and in the days since processing it when my expectation for myself was that I should be 100% focused on Bo’s recovery every second of that time.

It’s a good thing I had a long plane ride, because I had a shit-load to think about. When, all alone, you walk away from everything that is familiar to you, it seems like bravery. At least that’s certainly how I felt when I left for Paris in 1995. When you do it again, this time in your 20s with your husband in tow, it seems like romance and adventure. Somehow I have a little bit more of a stake in the world these days (it’s hell getting older), and it seems a lot more of a betrayal. And at the same time, it has been easy to lose myself in my husband and my children these past four months. Just getting us clothed, fed, and moved from Point A to Point B has been a challenge, as it is in any new place.

So walking away from that and returning to my hometown (and boy is that a loaded word for me) alone, to a time of crisis, left me feeling oddly vulnerable. Add a little jet lag, a lot of stress, some unexpected introspection coupled with some awesome self-sabotaging tendencies, and you might get a full-blown freak out. Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened. In truth, my jet lag wore off by mid-week last week, but my nights were filled with waking hours spent questioning each choice I made that led to me being here in this emotional wasteland.

A few nights spent on that line of thinking and it was easy to forget to eat. With the hectic schedule, I didn’t realize until days later that I’d stopped being hungry. I lost my voice and started to wonder if I was losing my Voice. The anxiety built up slowly over the next few days until its climax at JFK. I’m still not sure how I got on the plane.

I was welcomed home in Helsinki by a house full of people who had truly missed me and were dying to reconnect. And I was completely shut down. I spent three days in bed. I fought with Matt, I grouched at the kids. I continued to be unable to sleep. I fired off alarming (alarmingly incoherent?) emails to my friends in the middle of the night when I should have been sleeping. I fantasized about getting back on a plane, less to be of assistance than to simply escape.

I know that I am a master over-thinker, but I won’t give that any credit for my epiphany moment. It came sometime in the wee hours yesterday morning, and I’m still not sure what caused it. I recognized the mess I’d made of the past few days, but stopped castigating myself for it. I started to see the many gifts that I’ve been given. The opportunity to leave my family & friends behind and go to Helsinki. The ability to create something new and unknown instead of lingering in a stifling status quo. The chance to walk away from my job and work on my writing. The chance to work all of these conflicted feelings out without going insane or taking them, unresolved, to my grave. And somehow the guilt faded. I think the tension just got old, honestly. Homeostasis for me has always been a lot closer to happiness and contentment than angst, so something always pulls me back when I begin to linger on dark thoughts.

So here I am. And for the first time in a long while, I think I can say I’m over my emotional jet lag. My heart’s back here in Helsinki where it belongs, although I’ve realized that it’s big enough to hold love for all of the people in my life, even if I’m only physically present for three of them right now.