The Thing About Memories
Is that eventually, the bad parts fade and all you’re left with are recollections of the best times. This works with everything. Relationships, school, jobs…
What it works best with, however, is war.
With time, you forget what it felt like to be up for 72 hours and only eat once. You forget the smell of gunpowder clinging to your nose hairs for hours after shooting at other humans. You forget the rage that fills your body when mortars strike your FOB while you’re trying to do laundry. You even start to forget the way it feels to grab a dead friend by the wrists, lifting him into a body bag and loading him onto the helicopter. You forget the bad. It’s a condition of human preservation. Everything gets easier to live with.
Soon all you remember of war are the good times you shared. The most insignificant actions that become hilarious due to the stress. You remember your friends, smiling and laughing and telling funny stories. You remember the quotes you could fill an entire book with from your buddy.
You start to think, “It wasn’t so bad…” and you begin to miss it, knowing that nobody would understand what you meant if you said it out loud. Nobody but those who have been there.
I miss war.
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