Honolulu represents the worst of all that. Yet every time I fly in, anticipation begins to build just about the time I think I'll go crazy, stuffed into a narrow airliner seat between honeymooners and retired couples looking for Shangri-La.
I'd like to tell them to hold on tight to that person beside them, because that's where they'll find paradise. It is not a beach or a palm tree grove or the brim of a smoking black crater. It's a plateau inside their hearts, one that can only be reached in tandem.
I've never known him as a civilian. Never known him as just a regular guy, something I'm not sure he--or any warrior--can ever be again.
Ellen HopkinsThe true cost of war can't be measured in dollars, infrastructure, or body counts. It is tomorrows, wrung out of hope by yesterdays that refuse to retreat, vanish into the smoke of memory.
Ellen HopkinsAsk a soldier what he believes in. He'll tell you God. Country. The patient hands of death-- the ones he's wearing.
Ellen HopkinsThe ones that rip my heart from my chest are the little ones. The children, with tangled hair and dirty clothes, covering their own ugly secrets. And all they ask of me is shelter, food to warm their hollowness, a bed free of nightmares.
They look at me, and through me. And it's hard to tell who's more haunted-- them or me.
I wasn't an alcoholic. I didn't drink every day, didn't often drink to excess or binge. And could leave it alone completely for large swaths of time. But I did drink to be social. To have fun with friends. Sometimes, to sleep. Sometimes, to forget.
Ellen HopkinsBut how many young people truly comprehend the face of war until it's staring them down? You can't patrol unfriendly villages without embracing paranoia. You can't watch your battle buddies blown to bits without jonesing for revenge. You can't take a blow to the helmet without learning to duck. And you can't put people in your crosshairs, celebrate dropping them to the ground, without catching a little bloodlust. Paranoia. Revenge. Bloodlust. These things turn boys into men. But what kind of men?
Ellen HopkinsI know he did horrible things in the jungle. Things no amount of alcohol or pills could erase. War stains soldiers, all the way through their psyches, into their souls. I understand that, and could almost forgive him for taking his own life, to quiet the ghosts. But I can never forgive him for taking my mother with him.
Ellen HopkinsEach returning soldier is an in-the-flesh memoir of war. Their chapters might vary, but similar imagery fills the pages, and the theme of every book is the same--profound change. The big question became, could I live with that kind of change?
Ellen HopkinsSay a Hail Mary for me. I could use some forgiveness.
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