These Silent Woods

by Kimi Cunningham Grant

Let it suffice for me to say this: sometimes bad things happen and you’re unprepared and you make choices that seem good to you at the time, and then you look back and wish there were things you could undo, but you can’t, and that’s that.

Thing is, once you’ve crossed, once you’ve done almost everything you ever said you wouldn’t do, you also lose your sense of assurance that you won’t do those things again.

They tell you, it’s war; it’s different. But it’s not, not really. That’s just what they say so you can try and live with yourself. Thing is, though: you will always know what you did and what you took and what you lost and it’s your life, it’s all part of you, like it or not, and you can never truly separate yourself from it. I signed up for it, I followed through. I accept responsibility. My point is just that you can never really be free from the things you’ve done, and that’s that.

It is no respecter of persons, war. Even if it doesn’t damage your body, it damages your soul.

Consider how much has happened. How a life can veer and stretch and retract and shatter. How it feels in this moment, as though things could crumble yet again with just the slightest alteration. Tenuous, this life. Nothing sure at all.

The thing about grace is that you don’t deserve it. You can’t earn it. You can only accept it. Or not.