Love Is

In times of war, love can seem like a trivial concept. There are battles to be fought and graves to be dug, funerals to attend and, if you're lucky, the odd victory to be briefly celebrated before the casualties are counted and your fleeting triumph is rendered hollow. Between these travesties that become day-to-day routine there doesn't seem to be time to listen to what your heart is telling you. Your head can preside over it, and you can force yourself to ignore the tug of emotions on your heartstrings.

And maybe it's better that way, because in the long run war and love don't mix too well. The corpses that disturb you so much at first, the lifeless victims of a war that hurts us all, you get used to them. They don't haunt your nightmares as much after time, faceless guilt-demons that plague your nights and stain your days fade to the back of your mind. You hate the sight of them, of course you do, but you can cope.

However, what do you do when love is forced to collide with war, and your whole world ravaged? What do you do when that faceless corpse callously thrown to the sidelines of battle is your friend, or your lover, or even your child? Not so faceless any more, is it? Can you blank it out, and can you stop your mind from dwelling on it, when your own flesh and blood is at risk?

You can't, of course you can't. Even the very thought and fear can drive you insane, make you wake up in the middle of the night, shaking with terror. The irrational fears of the mother who has worked so hard in building her family are suddenly so much more rational, and as a result much more real. The boggart in the writing desk today could tomorrow be the reality, and the shoulder you cried on? Dead and gone in the time it takes to flicker an eyelid.

So should you harden your heart? Maybe if you alienate yourself and stop caring then it will hurt less when those around you fall. Maybe it's the best choice if you want to survive. Maybe.

But really, what separates us from the other side? Is it the house we were in at school, or the serpent engraved on their arms? No, it is neither, because what is war worth if not love? The difference between them and us is our hearts far more than our minds. Living another day alone is not by any means preferable to dying today side-by-side with the one that you love. Love is what defines us, what makes us see that this life of smoke and mirrors is not enough. Because a loveless life is never enough, and those that believe it is are either evil to the very core or delusional beyond belief.

Love is the force that makes you see the light at the end of the tunnel, that drives you forward and tells you that there has to be more to life, that helps you cope with whatever crap life throws at you. Love is the moment in-between battles, when three best friends can laugh and joke like they used to in happier times, and a couple can play with their newborn baby, and a daughter can argue with her mother over the most pointless of things. Love is the thing that, through all the heartbreak, can unite us against the common enemy.

Love isn't conditional, or compromising, it is the ups and downs and joys and grief and the most wonderful and terrible thing ever known to man.

Love is the wedding of two fighters, and their funeral less than a year later. Love is the birth of two brothers, and their separation that came a great many decades too soon. Love is beginnings and ends and everything in-between. Love is pain and grief and heartache, but it is also joy and radiance and the memories that keep us from falling apart.

Love is the energy that keeps us strong and gives us something worth fighting for.