It Can Make You Sick.

I have so many thoughts right now. Admittedly, I haven't read the news very thoroughly but I have been listening to NPR and visiting news sites which aren't American. So I'm going to word vomit for a bit and then we can all go back to our mornings.

I never get over having to meet other people who are just beginning a journey we have almost finished. I feel physically ill each time I have gone to meet a new wounded warrior and their shell-shocked family. In about a week, it will have been two years since Aaron and I lost everything we had built and dreamed about, and begun the long road to rebuilding our life together. I am still not over it; I am not sure I ever will be. So when I see a spouse or parent with that look on their face, the one that relays so many wordless emotions, I just want to cry with them. I just want to hug them and I always wish I could somehow give them my two years' worth of knowledge and experience on this journey. I want to them to believe me when I say that it will be okay again, but it's going to be awful getting there. Purgatory would be a paradise most days for some time, but it will change. There will eventually be more okay days than bad; then maybe at some point, more good days than bad or just okay.

So when the news blows up and the word is that our nation might try to solve another nation's problems the way we have been doing for some years now, I just want to scream. Or sob. Or just quit. I feel actual anxiety thinking about people going through what I've been through. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. At times, though, it feels as if those like us and the dead are just collateral damage. It's just a cost of what this nation does. NBD, right? We got $100,000 and a sweet retirement deal for my husband's troubles, and I'll even get paid, too. The families of the dead supposedly get four or five times that amount. So I guess because we're paid off, it's all okay, right? But it only really works out for the most physically injured and the families of the fallen. Ask a single leg amputee, someone with extensive nerve damage, or PTSD how well they made out after losing so much. Those are the ones who get screwed, and I promise there are more of them than there are of us.

So I'm going to have to say "no." I have to take a pass. I am just as horrified at what is happening to sweet little babies and other innocents. I have never felt threatened on my land, nor watched a war between two groups take out so many people who had no choices in the matter. Perhaps if more nations were willing to match American troop numbers, I'd feel better about it. But we know that isn't the case. It appears that our people are worth less than others. Is it because there is more of us? I don't know. I don't know what to say nor can I make a suggestion on how to fix anything. Should the world care to do something? Yes. But it's a little selective, don't you think? What about all the other nations who have gone through similar loss? Why this one? Why this time? There is nothing worth more planes full of maimed and the dead. Not one cause. It just needs to stop.