the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

This will be my last "talking türkiye" post. I'm home now, but this is very much about Turkey still. 

I felt depressed and out-of-sorts for the last few weeks I was in Turkey. The last few days I was there, I felt dispossessed, as though I was leaving my tribe. My friends kept asking if I was excited about going home, and when I stopped to think about it, I had to admit that I was ambivalent, at best. Admitting this (to myself, even) was difficult. I didn't understand what it meant, but it couldn't be good. I mean, I love Colorado, I love my friends and family here, I love the job that awaited me, and (of course) I love my wife and pets and home. I wanted to be home...didn't I?

At the same time, I figured I’d been in Izmir long enough. I'd seen the things I wanted to see in Turkey. I had long since stopped walking around in a state of dazed wonder, gazing slack-jawed at the history all around me, the mosques, and the weirdly organized madness of the outdoor bazaar, and listening to the strange language and the calls to prayer. While I could only speak and understand tiny bits of the language, it now sounded...normal. Walking through traffic and crowds was normal. Everything about Turkey felt normal to me, and I think that’s part of the problem: I wasn’t visiting anymore. This had become home.

I didn’t have any idea what I was about to go through. As far as I knew, everyone who left Turkey bound for their families and home were happy to go. We didn’t have the Donut of Misery, but we did count the days when our time got short. No one warned me that coming home would be hard (and if they had, I doubt I’d have believed them). So I was blindsided.

But let me back up.

When Americans are about to leave Izmir, the other Americans will routinely schedule as much of their time as they possibly can, because the clock is now visibly (audibly?) ticking. The person who is about to leave will normally schedule all the social engagements she can for the same reason. The last couple of weeks are intense and emotional and exhausting. 

I burned my candle at both ends and in the middle and halfway down the edges. No regrets. I have many, many good friends in Izmir. I'll get back to this. 

I was to leave on Monday morning, before God gets up. I went to Bahar’s Saturday evening. She presented me with a going-away gift: her father’s tavla board. You may remember from one of my previous entries that her father passed away many years ago, and she loved him deeply. He was very much a tavla man. She said he liked to say that a day without tavla is a wasted day. He had a small travel board that he would tuck under his arm and carry with him so he could play a match with a friend during a lull in business.

Bahar presented his board to me.

Not many things leave me speechless. I looked at the board—it is magnificent, as you might imagine, handmade with mother of pearl—and asked Bahar at least three different times if she was sure. She finally told me that the gift was her mother’s suggestion. Bahar’s sister has been helping her in the shop for a few weeks now, so I turned to her and asked how she felt about it. She said that she also wanted me to have it. I am their new sister.*

* I have two brothers I've adopted during my tour here...I mean there, too. Taso (aka, Anastasios Markousis), and Khy (Benedetti).

Now you have a small taste of the sort of friends and life I left in Izmir. My "issued friends."

May I say, though, that I shopped elsewhere for carpets and for pretty much everything else, so I know how much Bahar is one-of-a-kind. She doesn’t take her customers for all she can get from them; in the two years I knew her, she was often in the position to sell to the highest bidder, but she never even considered it. She would often buy carpets from her dealers with a specific customer in mind, and would refuse to sell to anyone else until that customer had a look at the carpet. She’s a businesswoman, but she isn’t about the money. As long as she can afford to feed the stray dogs and cats and take them to the vet when she finds them hurt, and feed herself and her mother, and stay in business, she’s happy. Her father would be proud.

I spent my last few public hours Sunday night at Bahar's, which is—incidentally—our own version of Cheers. It was usually the same crowd, and we would bring in the drink of our choice and talk, tell stories, and occasionally (yes!) buy carpets. I can think of no place I’d rather spend my final hours in Izmir. (Speaking of which, Bahar never took a picture of me with a carpet. I owe her one.)

It was a somewhat subdued couple of hours, but I'm glad I was there to say goodbye. 

I think I got three hours of sleep that night. Barbara came to visit and we talked for a couple of hours before she left to write a paper (at about 10:30pm—I know, right?), then I slept fitfully until my 2am wakeup call. My flight was to be at 4:20am, and it took a while to get to the airport.

I called for backup (that is, for a busboy to haul my PCS luggage to the cab) and left the room. Much to my surprse, Kalli was waiting for me in the lobby to escort me to the airport. 

I've never had an escort service before. 

She doesn't have a car there. She was there simply to ride with me to the airport and see me off. At 2am. 

On the ride to the airport, she said that she just feels that when a friend is leaving--not on leave or TDY, but for good--they should be seen off properly. No one has ever done this for me, and truly, I've rarely been so touched--particularly given the source, who is not given to sappiness at all.*

* I don't gravitate toward sappy people. I gravitate toward intelligent, witty (often sarcastic), and usually somewhat-disillusioned friends. Kalli is well within my friendship parameters.

From there, I flew to Germany. I'd taken three days of leave en route to spend some time with AlvaRummel.*

* Cela Alvarez and John Rummel, two utterly awesome people who happen to be married to each other and who, for reasons defying explanation, think I’m cool, interesting, and fun. Or at least two of the three.

In Germany, I was well-kept (as one would expect from good friends in an exotic locale) and I had a great time, as I invariably do when I’m with them, but...I was strangely empty. I was confused about this feeling, and I pushed it down. I was going home, after all. Home. And on my way, I was in Germany--Germany!--with two of my best friends. “Empty” did not compute.

I got home at 6:40pm last Thursday. Mich picked me up, right on time, and yes…she was a sight for sore eyes. I was happy to be home.

But I wasn’t.

I was just exhausted, I figured. An 11.5-hour flight from Frankfurt to Dallas will do that to anyone, right? It was probably just the travel. I’d be better after a good night’s sleep.

I woke up at some odd hour (predictable, really) and wanted to talk with my friends back in Izmir—which I did, technology having reached such heights. (I cannot begin to imagine what it had to be like to leave friends and pretty much all you accepted as “normal” before our current technological advances. You were just lost and there was no one to help.)

Since I enlisted in the eighties, I’ve heard that remotes are “different.” Those who had been on remotes tried to explain that, you know, you are in a foreign country with a foreign language and without your families, and you get close. I submit that it is impossible to understand what that statement really means until you’ve been there.

I’ll add this, though: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed in the beginning of my tour, and I have been utterly myself since. I’ve never been able to be myself with my colleagues in the military, and I am convinced that the fact that I didn’t have to hide anymore contributed a great deal to our bonding. It made a difference for me, in that I didn’t have to pretend I didn’t have a personal life at all, but it also made a huge difference to them. When you meet someone like me who seems to have no life, you know an important fact or two is missing, but all you know for sure is that I don’t trust you enough to share it with you.

DADT built a huge wall where no wall should have ever been. In many cases, it destroyed esprit de corps, unit morale, and bonding. May it rest in peace.

When I left Izmir, I left many friends who accepted me, warts and all, and still loved me. No. Not just friends. I’ve always had friends like that. You ask me, that is the very definition of “friend.” These were more than friends; they were colleagues.

In Izmir, I came to understand what “the Air Force family” really means. (Seriously. I’ve always heard talk of it, but it was just one of those things people say because it sounds so warm-fuzzy. As it turns out, it isn’t just something people say.)

There are other aspects of coming home that can make the transition difficult, too. Coming home from a remote is like returning from a deployment.* Your spouse has become largely independent. You now have multiple stressors that you not only can deal with, but you’re expected to.

* The AF calls it “redeployment” when you come home from a deployment; I think they should call it “undeployment.” “Redeployment” is when you send me back to the desert.

When I got home, I felt bombarded with a litany of things we’d need to budget for and plan for the house in the next few months. I finally said, “Please. Right now, can we just take it one day at a time?”

Shortly thereafter, I talked with Chris, a good friend* whose family is my own, about this. She explained that first, what I was going through was normal. I was grieving. Second, Mich didn’t mean to overwhelm me. She just wanted me back in her life—in our life. Which makes sense.

* And ex. There’s a great story there. Maybe I’ll tell it someday.

To Mich’s eternal credit, she didn’t ask any further questions or complain. She respected my wishes, and she continues to understand—or at least try to understand—something she really has no basis for understanding herself.

Have I mentioned how much I love her?

When I got home, I got a message from Phil, my good friend from Izmir. He came home a couple of months ago. His message was: “Hey, Hooker. Call me when you get the chance.” I’m not a fan of telephones, but I called him Sunday night. After the initial formalities,* he said, “I think you’re homesick.”

* coarse jesting 

I said, “What?”

He said, “You’re homesick. For Izmir.”

I said yes. Yes I was. He said, “Yeah. I was for a long time. It’s ok.”

I asked how long it had been before he felt normal again. He said it took him at least a month. This, from a man who is happily married to his high school sweetheart and has two beautiful daughters and a great home life. It isn’t like he didn’t want to go home. But he felt it, too. He told me that since I’d been there two years, I might need to give it a couple of months.

Turns out, this is why he was calling: to tell me that I wasn’t alone, and I wasn’t the only one. That, and we’ve not yet plumbed the depths of inappropriate jokes we can make.

Again…this is the kind of friend I had in Izmir. The kind who follows you—not in the stalker sense, but you get the idea. He was concerned for me, and he knew to reach out to me, and he did.

The friends I left in Izmir do the same thing. I still spend entirely too much time online chatting with them. Again, Mich accepts this without comment. Her love is so often expressed in what she doesn’t say or do.

Is she amazing or what.

That was rhetorical. I know the answer.

d