Lately I've been inspired to do more creative writing and share it with others. This blog will be used to do just that. I will update it at least twice a week until September 2nd, when I will update once a week or once every other week, depending on school and the work load. Each post will be my creative response to a prompt. You can even comment asking me to answer your prompt and my next post will be based on your prompt. Each post will be 500 words or less about the prompt and what came to my mind. My prompt for this week is "Write about something ugly- war, fear, hate, or cruelty- but find the beauty in it." Below is what I've come up with based upon it.
I used to find war ugly, but now I see the meaning in it. When I was 10, my dad was in Vietnam. He fought for me and yet I hated the war. Hell, I hated war period. I still do. I didn't know there was any good in it. The freedom that came afterwards was something that I took for granted- something that half of America probably took for granted. When my dad returned home I remember asking him what he hated most about the war and he said to me, "It wasn't the war. It wasn't even Vietnam, it was what the war could do to people. The power of war." I remember thinking about what he had said. Days passed and as they did, I thought more about how war could change people. Even, in the back of my mind, thinking about how the war had changed him. Before he left, he was someone that I admired, someone that I adored and wanted to grow up to be just like. Once he returned home, I saw him as someone different. Not a bad different, just not who he used to be. But what came back with him wasn't all bad. He had a loyalty to his family that couldn't be destroyed and a passion for my mother that would never fade. Everything I love about him today was forged in that war. 30 years ago, before he left, all he taught us about the war was not to go into it. Never to enlist. But today he explains to us that there is a light at the end of war and it isn't all bad. War brings about freedom and forgiveness, compassion and unity. Maybe it's not the way I imagined thinking about war. The first words that come to my mind when I think about war are not unity and compassion, but I understand it. I understand why war is necessary and I understand that it can be used for good.
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