Fear Number 6

I was with another Army wife when I heard the chaotic reporting of the Fort Hood shooting. This, like learning of any systematic and yet completely irrational killing feels like swallowing a giant gumball whole. It makes you choke and it causes great pain as it sinks from the back of your throat down into your lower abdomen.

I know the feeling well. It comes with every helicopter crash when I know Joe is traveling throughout Iraq. It comes with every car bomb in Joe's region and it came the day I was on the phone with him when there was an explosion. While I knew that Joe was safe in Iraq on the day of the Fort Hood shootings, the knowledge of the horror experienced by those families who were at home on that base was enough to render the same sickening feeling I get with the knowledge that there is a possibility that Joe is in danger.

Army families deal with the possibility of death each day, but strangely the immense fear of death associated with deployments somehow diminishes real-life dangers that everyone experiences including car accidents, diseases and apparently now the violent wrath of lunatics as well.

I'm not an advocate of paranoia. I do however mourn the loss of one more space of safety. Whether that space of safety was real or not for military personnel and families is beside the point. Beyond the loss of individual lives, we have collectively lost another space that previously offered freedom from fear and fear number six is the unfortunate and yet universally common thread in the fabric of military life.

I remember the first golf war in vivid snippets. I was in kindergarten. Occasionally I slept in the bathtub for two reasons. The first reason is that because if war was anything like basketball, eventually they were going to be on our side of the court. The second reason was because the bathtub seemed to be a natural place to hide from bombs. That was the first time I lost my freedom from fear. I was in my own house and in my own bathtub.

As an Army wife I believe we are facing two main questions. The first is from the military or governmental perspective and questions how we can create actual safety. The second is as a civilian and questions how we can help ourselves to feel safe or perhaps simply safe-er regardless of the actual level of safety.