2.5 years with the 99%

Today I read a blog posted on a "news" site titled something about the call no mom wants to receive. Attention grabber. After reading the blog I found myself thinking "seriously? a broken leg? an easily recovered from broken leg...that's what all your "I just sat beside myself with guilt because he was hurt and I was 600 miles away." "We're making it through it" blah blah blah."

Her kid broke his leg skiing and she was 600 miles away and it took her MONTHS to be able to write about it.

Seriously.

Another reminder I'm not like 99%. Right, Wrong or Indifferent.


The Husband and our family has been detached from active duty for 2.5 years. We have not been part of the 1% for 2.5 years. And I still don't get the 99%.

The 99% that act like a broken leg is the end of the known world that they had to spend months emotionally recovering from. It's a broken leg. Kid is still alive. Still sucking air. He's going to walk again. It's a leg. It's not his life.

The 99% who smile, nod and engage is the most surface level small talk possible on the playground every day after school. Weather, kids, price of oil. No talking about big fears, big concerns, how their morning really went, what they're really struggling with. People who've spent decades together yet don't really have any idea who they are or who their friends are, everything is superficial. No one knows what goes on behind their doors.

The 99% that need to schedule every minute of every day for their children/spouse/social calendar so that they're always involved in something and making a name for themselves, it's all about the "right" schools, it's all about the "right" social events.

The 99% who a bad day involves a flat tire, a sick kid, or at the worst, a spouse who arrives home late. That's it. All temporary, all easily remedied. But just so incredibly agonizing to live through for the 99%. On a related note: the 99% tend to believe a casserole cures all.

When The Husband first got out, I desperately wanted to fit in. I wanted to be accepted by the 99%. I wanted to be them. I wanted to be normal.

Normal is overrated.

I can't ever be the 99%. And I'm okay with that.

I'm an oversharer, The Husband has TBI, the kids have ADHD, I have a skewered sense of what defines as a tragedy, I'd rather stand quietly alone than suffer through superficial small talk, I'm going to engage immediately upon meeting you because I'm trained to make friends fast: time is a luxury I don't believe in, what happens behind closed doors at my house also happens in front of open windows, I'm going to bring you a casserole, feed your kids, do your laundry, and then text you every 30 mins after I've left for days when you're going through something, I can't make Christmas plans for 3 years in the future because I still don't trust that I can plan that far out in the future.

There is no hidden me. There is no hidden agenda. There's just me and my very different sense of reality.

And after 2.5 years of it, I'm finally comfortable enough for that to be just fine with me. I'm not ever going to view a flat tire as the end of the known world and the 99% aren't ever going to understand how the 1% does it. And it's all good.