The Sound of War

The noise is deafening. No one tells you how loud war actually is. They tell you all about the fear, the exhaustion and the killing, but there is no mention of the noise that fills your very mind without end. It drives people insane, and I'm not kidding. Many of my friends hear voices within these sounds, and they don't always say the nicest things. It takes all their strength just to ignore the voices, thus they have no strength left to fight their battle. It truly is a sad thing.

I don't hear the voices, thank goodness, but I still don't feel as if my sanity is safe. It is rough out here. Most of us just hide in the trenches, quietly praying or silently weeping. It is what we do best, this whole hiding thing. Maybe we are cowards, but I see is as self-preservation. People who leave the trenches rarely come back, and when they do, they are broken beyond repair. At least in here we are whole, or can pretend to be, at the very least. That's the thing about us, even though we are fighting the same war, we still have to pretend as if everything is all right and never talk about the impending doom that looms behind us.

I wish we did talk, though, it would make things easier. Instead, we just watch people lie on the floor, willing themselves to die. They have given up, and all we do is stare. We've been there before, though, so we figure everything will be okay. Plus, we are far too absorbed in the cuts that lace our arms. We always forget where we get them from, but we assume they come from the barbwire we have to crawl over every day and every night. We are always crawling, did I mention that. That's another thing about war, you can never rest. Even when you think you are resting, you are actually moving. You can also never sleep. Who can with this din rushing through their head?

In the end, the most frightening thing about war is the enemy. You never know how strong they are or how much they know about you. Although, in our case, we know that they know much about us. They know our weaknesses and they know our strengths. They know how to slowly break us down until we can't fight anymore. There are times when they know us even more they we know ourselves. That's what makes them so terrifying.

It gets worse, because when I look over my shoulder I see my malignant face staring back at me in my bathroom mirror. It's the only time I see the sadness within me tearing at my face and pulling me downward into a dark abyss. I see it in my sullen eyes and the dark bags that sit beneath them. I see it in the hopeless expression that stares back at me. This is also the time when I realize that I am losing this war with myself. So, I turn around and hide within the trench again, along with all the others who know the truth about the war, and that the din within their heads will never quiet down, even if they manage to win.