One of the supposed “perks” about deployment is being able to starfish in bed.

Hell its such a well known supposed perk I even blogged about it- here.

It wasn’t a hugely successful blog post and now I have figured out why.

Because starfishing is fucking bollocks.

If you’re a military spouse anyway.

It is so unilaterally shit to roll over half asleep, throw your arm over and cuddle… nothing. Mainly because in your half asleep state you have totally and utterly forgotten about the sodding arse ache deployment and therefore also forgotten he has gone.

So your peaceful, possibly-rude-dream-filled-slumber, has been ruined. All because you dared to forget for thirty seconds that they’ve deployed. You utter monster. 

Or you wake up slowly, a few minutes before the alarm/toddler has gone off, and stretch out. The early morning light fills the curtains, maybe a bird is singing or something. 

You stick out a (slightly fuzzy deployment) leg, fully expecting to happily collide with the muscly sea salted leg of your sailor. You find…. Nothing. Nada, zip, zilch. Just the 100% cotton fitted sheet from primark (or the dog- which is just weird). 

You circle your leg around in the bed, searching and searching in a half asleep state for his leg, like trying to find your keys in your handbag after a night out.

Oh yeah, that’s right. He’s deployed isn’t he? Tits. Great. 

You try to block it out and go back to sleep. What were you dreaming about again? As for me, I try to nudge back into my semi conscious sleep state, it’s a lot more fun there, and (for the next few months at least) I’ll get a lot more action there than in real life. 

If (when) that fails, I stretch out in the bed. Arms open, legs akimbo. The standard starfishing position. I try to appreciate it. I really do. But I’d rather be smacking Popeye in the nose and kicking him in his junk than meeting the cold horizontal cliff face of my bedsheets.

Starfishing- it’s totally overrated. 

Muchos love,

Olive X