winkgirl4's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- War. Reading: *Finished It's What He Would've Wanted by Sean Hughes (I�ll review it, tomorrow.) *Getting ready to start Atonement by Ian McEwan. *And, as soon as Christian gets his copy, we will start The Life of Pi by Yann Martell, together. Estimated time until Christian's arrival: 26 Lonnng days. Estimated time until my move to L.A.: Three and a half months. Something for which I'm grateful: That my daughter gives me butterfly kisses. I know how lucky I am to have this little girl and it breaks my heart to think of leaving her behind. I need to make this move but a very real part of me writhes from its anticipated consequences though I know nothing will make me stop fighting for her. I know that my comments will seem no different than all the other rhetoric splashed across various forms of media covering the �War in Iraq,� but I�m going to make this one statement and let that be. When I was in third grade I watched a movie about the prophecies of Nostradomus. My little girl mind wrapped around those images and held tight while I spent my first memorable sleepless night doing the math. According to the movie, a massive war would break out in the year 2000 between the United States and some middle-eastern country. It would last years and would be considered World War III. I lay there thinking, �How old would I be? Where would I be living? Would I be married? Would I have children? Would I want to have children if I knew this was going to happen?� Oh, and I believed that it was going to happen. My mind couldn�t conceive of anything else. In fact, as I got older, I held in the back of that adolescent mind that time was running out. But, I also had this one small comfort: I was an American. America is the good guy. America would protect me. America is unstoppable. I�m an adult, now, and I don�t hold any stock in those things that frightened me throughout my childhood as I stopped believing in magic powers some time ago. If you believe in that, fine. I just don�t. However, here we are. We find ourselves at war with a middle-eastern country and I have all the answers to the questions that my little girl mind labored over so many years ago. I�m thirty-one years old. I�m divorced with two children and I�m getting ready to move to California. I have a seven-year-old son who would like to know if there�s any chance that he could be killed and, as much as I would like to, I can�t bring myself to protect him from the truth. I wipe my son�s tears away, everyday, while we discuss war. And do you want to know the saddest part of all of this for me? It�s that this is the first time that I�ve felt ashamed to hold my head high and call myself an American. I�m ashamed because, much like my belief in magic, I can no longer grasp that we are the good guys. Gone is my belief that we are the protectors and that we are unstoppable. Don�t mistake my disdain for this situation as a lack of support for those who have to fight for its cause. I�m supportive of our soldiers. My heart goes out to them. I wish I still believed in a God so that I had someone I could go to and beg him to bring them home safely. And don�t think that I don�t agree that power-driven dictators need to be ousted from office, because I do. But I also believe that we are being led into war by ours. The pride I�ve had for the America that was built by intelligent men and women has been taken away by a blood-thirsty administration. Great men have spent lifetimes building the relationships that have been the foundation of our foreign policies and we, in collaboration with the man we elected leader, have turned our backs on them. People are shouting all over the world in protest to this war. Letters like this one are being submitted to web sites and newspapers. Musicians are being boycotted for exercising their rights as, supposedly, free people. And our voices fall on deaf ears. I find myself more frightened than I ever was as a little girl. 1:08 p.m. - 2003-03-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||