The Journey

Sometimes deep friendship develops out of mutual interests and pursuits: commonalities and loves shared, a resonant view on life. Other times, kinship is born from the bitter circumstances of hardship, cruelty and duress. Soldiers sharing a foxhole, “battle buddies,” can experience a bonding that rivals, if not surpasses, the closest of familial ties. I have a sister in which we share both of these bonds simultaneously and the cord that connected us, as a result, proved to be indestructible. Thank God for that bond.

But you, old friend, have no such bonds. You are tied only to the bonds of trauma that have wrapped around you like poisonous tentacles, delivering little doses of thought-destroying opioid at regular intervals to prevent any possibility of your waking up to the shocking and dismal reality of your fate. For so long, my heart went out to you, recognizing the victim trapped beneath the circumstances of constant influence. But yet, I have had to wrestle with the equal reality of your complicity and your complacence in the face of grave, ongoing injustice.

When I think of you now, former friend, it is with sadness that you rise in my thoughts. I feel sorry for you. Sorry for the life you’ve ended up with. Sorry for your lack of will to live. Sorry for your lack of deep connection to others. Sorry for your lack of true caring for yourself or others. Sorry for what has happened to you, what has become of you and what you have allowed. For you, I feel so very sorry. You were the only one I could not help.

There was a time in which I regarded our bond as intimate beyond all others: two souls, permanently yoked into a forced friendship among those who should have been sworn enemies. A time in which I wished I could simply run away with you and start fresh, together. A time in which I believed we shared mutual caring and respect. I cared for you so very deeply; the bonds of sisterhood run fierce in my veins. I wanted desperately to believe that our bond shared that element of indestructibility.

But now I know, it was nothing more than a temporary foxhole. Your commander was always your only true station of loyalty, not out of genuine love but out of genuine fear and a bottomless need. I feel sorry for myself that I unfortunately understand this fear and this need, because in all truth, I fully do. I feel sorry for you that you have yet to know anything else.

In the end, it was only what others thought of you that you showed any real concern for: whether your well honed mask of goodness and gentleness and innocence had been marred in their eyes. I’m sure that fear is long gone, but yes, as a matter of fact, your mask fell and you were seen in a wholly new and honest light.

All the same, without you, I may never have survived that foxhole. Or perhaps, without you, I would never have stayed so long in that foxhole. It’s hard to say. Either way, I’d hoped we would survive together. But it seems the fallen corpse of my former comrade will forever lay slain on that bloody battlefield.

…All the same, I think there will always be some small part of me that is waiting and rooting and hoping for your resurrection, your salvation. I’m sorry I could not save you, the one who deluded herself into believing that she was saving another. Goodnight, Saigon.

With Love,
Your former friend,
Alicia