Military Life on the Outskirts

I knew it was in the works, so it was absolutely not a surprise when my husband copied me on an email about a U.S. Marine Corps separation brief. But, in the back of my mind the last several months (OK, fine, the last several years), retirement was still so far off in the distance that it was abstract — a future Kristi problem. This email sort of nabbed the abstract concept of Marine Corps retirement from the back recesses of my subconscious and plopped it in my lap. When “one day” gets a date on the calendar, things get very real.

“Fake It ‘til You Make It (And I Did)”

As I like to do whenever I am faced with a challenge large or small, I began to overthink. What would this, now eminent, retirement mean for our family now that it was no longer “if,” but “when?” I tried to find a parallel time in my life that could do justice to the change coming into focus in front of us. A change that would require essentially learning a new lifestyle. I found a worthy example in the military spouse retirement counterpart: when I became a military spouse.

As a new spouse, I remember feeling like I was always just outside the group. I had no deployment stories to contribute to the conversation. I’d only PCS’d once, so I couldn’t tell you whether it went well or poorly — it just went. My browser history was primarily comprised of “What is [insert acronym] + Marine Corps.” And as a lifelong introvert who has been described as “independent to a fault,” I was great with sidestepping most offers for help and spouse events (at least until I was adopted by an extrovert who made showing up less anxiety-inducing). I was content watching and learning from the spouses around me, absorbing anything I could and finding incredible, genuine friendships along the way. Full disclosure, I still feel like I’m making it up as I go most days, which may be a contributing factor to the retirement shock.

Connecting the Dots

In those early days, I felt like I was living on the outskirts of military life, trying to blend in and act like I knew what OPSEC and TDY meant. Today, I feel much the same way (though, I am proud to report that I now have those definitions down). I’m once again feeling like an outsider, albeit an outsider with significantly less energy and more salt.

For starters, we no longer live on base, so the twice-daily morning and evening colors reminder of military life aren’t sounding. Our last two tours — the D.C. area and where we are now — have been a stark contrast from living on base the five years prior.  Without commissary and exchange shopping and having the Marine Corps at the center of every conversation and relationship, it’s easy to forget it’s still such a central component of our lives.

The 40 minutes between me and base might not be the root of the problem, but it is part of it. No, the root of the problem is my developing mindset — one finding it harder to relate and engage. Remember “senioritis” — that feeling that plagued us during that last year of high school? I would equate my current mindset to that. I’m still showing up, doing what I need to do, even volunteering for the stuff I chose to do, but when people start talking about their next set of orders or prepping for their upcoming move, they’ve lost me. It’s not because I don’t care. I absolutely do. I’ll listen, empathize, and — if asked — freely share any experience I’ve gained along the way. But I can no longer relate because that’s no longer the reality of someone on the outskirts. To soften the harshness of this, it’s like me talking to my military friends with a few more years left on their clock about the excitement, fears and jarring emails of retirement. They listen, empathize and offer advice, but they can’t yet relate.

Fighting the Senioritis

This outskirts feeling is heavy, in addition to the weight of the life-changing event around the corner. Especially for someone who has prioritized showing up and pitching in because we (Marine families) need each other. It takes added effort and energy to stay engaged, stay positive, and not let the miles between me and the base or another Marine Corps family be an excuse to say no.

If you’re a military spouse at the city center meeting me today, please don’t mistake my wandering mind, fatigue and saltiness for lack of empathy. Know that I was you not that long ago, and you will be me faster than you ever thought possible. Military life looks different here from my spot on the outskirts. Big stressors look smaller as they shift to the rearview. You come to the disheartening realization that the truly big problems are bigger than you, but that doesn’t mean you don’t chip away at them. To quote myself from a blog roughly a decade ago, “The military is like a small town.” We should strive to be good neighbors; that goes for those of us on the outskirts, too.