A piece of writing as I take a break from AWID…unedited…

I am in my library trying to rewrite A Walk in Darkness. I’m trying, I really am. 

The memory of my war is still fresh after all this time. I write some, cry, and write some more.

Even as I write this story, again, for not the first time either, people are dying in Ukraine.  The President is meeting with Zelensky. Meanwhile, innocent people are trapped in between two sides ferociously fighting each other. One side is fighting to preserve their way of life, the other side, heck I don’t know what the other side is doing.

Their situation reminds me of Fallujah. 

Innocent people were there too. Trapped between us and the insurgents. Planes dropped pamphlets instructing the innocents to get out of Dodge. I’ve often wondered, where did we think they’d go?

If they tried to leave, the insurgents would kill them. If they somehow managed to get out of the city without dying or losing their family in a hail of gunfire, how would we have known they were who they claimed to be?

I guess I’ll never have an answer to those questions, because no one tried to get out. And what happened there, happened. I’m sure the Ukrainians probably feel the same way those innocent people felt as we closed in. 

I’m too old to fight another war. It hurts to get out of bed, and I struggle to stay asleep. Grouchiness isn’t useful in a war. 

All I can do is pray and send care packages. I hope this crap gets ended, sooner rather than later. But I fear it is only just beginning.

I’m writing about Fallujah in A Walk in Darkness, and I suppose that’s why I wrote this piece of writing. No matter how much things change, the excuses we use to justify violence and murder stay the same. 

Back to writing AWID. You guys take care.