Welcome to the Invisible Sorority

Very soon my husband will deploy overseas. Because he is not 'active duty' military, we are not part of a 'community'. My kids don't go to school with other kids of deployed servicemen, my neighbors don't have husbands leaving soon, I feel like I am walking around - invisable. My friends go to bed at night thanking God that their spouses were not as misguided as mine as to be a 'weekend warrior'. They thank God their kids aren't asking "What are we going to do if Daddy dies"? They sit back and thank God they are not me. I would probably do the same thing if I were in their shoes. But I am not, and won't be for far too long. Instead I will be in sort've a Limbo, not a Military Spouse exactly, because I'm too much of a Liberal to allow that label, yet not a 'civilian' either because now my life will be governed by email and phone calls at odd hours and strange anacronyms that I don't understand. And fear. Let's not forget the fear. Fear that he won't make it home, fear that he will make it home and not be the way he was before he left, fear that I'll screw it all up while he's gone, fear that I won't need him anymore after the sentence is over. Fear that our marriage will become a casualty of a war that has taken SO MUCH from so many already. I just want to scream at Bush, attend rallies opposing the war, become an activist, a strong voice. But then again, I have been drafted into that Invisible Sorority. I am not a Proud Military Wife, I am a Reluctant one. I love him, not what he does in the military, not his sense of duty or patriotism, but him; the quiet man who does the smug dance when our kids behave better than his siblings' kids, the man who drinks expensive beer but tries to fit in with the 'Bud" crowd, the man who can say so much by not saying anything.
If one more person thanks me for my husband's service to the country, I will literally kick them in shins. unlike other Americans, I have been drafted.