Writing the War Out

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”

Anais Nin

This thought has been with me for several years now.

I first read it when I was trying to understand why I wasn’t able to write. I journaled all my life, until that year. It was a year I could have never predicted, and so difficult that I simply didn’t want to think about things as they were happening, not to mention tasting them once again in retrospect. When this quote from Anais Nin came to me, things started to become clear, and my writing power returned.

Now I wonder, what is it about some moments in life that we need to write them into everything that comes next? Why do they carry through time? What is it about needing to tell a story and write a moment down? Is it a show of ultimate love for a moment to retell and relive it in different parts of your life? How perverted is that love when the moments chosen are so dark that you no longer see any good reason for their existence? Why go there at all? What’s the point? Why not chose brighter and happier moments? Isn’t the point of the existence of such records to uplift, to push forward, to inspire, to motivate? In order for them to be all that, shouldn't they be beautiful? How can beauty be found in senseless tragedy?

I remember the war. I think about the war. I write about the war.

Perhaps that is the ultimate task at hand - finding beauty in nonsense, in the darkest of places.

Is it arrogant to set such a challenge for yourself? Perhaps.

But then again, the moments exist, they were carried through time, so it would be a lie not to live up to them all and set them free at last.

There are no lies in them.

The truth is - I have no ownership of them either.

The moments being recorded here belong to all of us because they created the experiences of the humans who carry them now.

The people captured in them are real.

Their pain is real. And their strength and faith are so powerful that they might seem unreal at times.

These are the superheroes in my world.

All I can hope for is that you hear them out, witness their pain and strength, and set out to create a better version of reality.