War, What Is It Good For?
DoD Ep. 6: The Reluctant Warrior Woman
It’s my birthday today. Like a precocious child or an imagination-less beauty contestant, I wish for world peace this year. And if that’s too much to ask for a non-decennial birthday, how about peace within our personal universes, whether it’s you and your parents, partner or pet rat.
We are all heartsick over what’s happening in the Middle East. The brutality of war is so accessible now. I oscillate between having seen and read too much to not wanting to miss anything because isn’t it our duty to bear witness to the horror instead of pretend it’s not happening, especially during the Love Is Blind Season 5 reunion.1
As I watch gutting footage and probable propaganda from both sides, along with the fear driving all of it, I can’t help but see the parallels with the war I’ve had to wage during my never-ending divorce.
Shots fired don’t reverse. Children are always casualties and collateral damage. After so many years, it’s hard to remember what’s right or wrong, why you fought so long and hard, and I can’t even tell you anymore whether it was worth it.
I’m just still standing. That’s it.
There was a boy of about seven vomiting sobs against a dusty white wall that miraculously wasn’t rubbled by the bombs. The caption said his whole family had just been killed by the airstrikes and the boy was gasping, the shock of it waving through him, holding him upright. All I could see was the grief, terror and hate that would replace the shock, those waves rippling out for another generation of destruction and conflict. How do we untangle truth or justice from the pain that’s seared onto that boy who will one day become a man who will consume and be consumed because all the love he’d ever known was blown to smithereens in front of him when he was a child?
I want to cry thinking about that boy among the thousands of other trauma-blasted boys and girls beside him.
I want to cry thinking about my boy and girl and what the ripples of their wounds will be.
We talk about divorce wars and custody battles as if using military language is a kind of inoculation-by-hyperbole. It’s not actually a war. We’re not really battling.
Except it is. And we are. When we shouldn’t be.
Because why? Two people who formerly loved each other and made a family together realize their marriage no longer works. Does this require annihilating your spouse?
Yet here I am.
Warrior woman, Durga Maggie who rides into battle on lion-back, mother and protectrice, armed with spears, swords and fierce destruction. I would burn it all down to protect my cubs and I have. I will swing my sword for justice and balance and I do.
I wish I didn’t have to. I’m not the only one.
I am surrounded by mothers like me. We scream and we fight and we weep and we fight. Our hearts cracked; our souls savaged. Some of us fall by the wayside, too spent to continue. Some of us lead others in the charge. Some of us get gravely ill. Some of us die, by our own hand or others’.
Our babies grow bigger without us while injustice yawns its maw around us. But we keep fighting for our children, for our freedom. Even though we shouldn’t have to.
That’s what our war is for. To be free even though freedom should be a given from the second we take our first breath on this planet.
So if I could wish for anything this birthday, it’s that you and everyone around you lay down their weapons, even for just a moment.
Take off the battle mantle and remember you were born free. Remember your soft humanity (and, if you can, theirs).
All wars eventually end.
Actually, let me wish for that: For your wars to end and for peace to blossom around you and your children.
And if you need to fight again tomorrow, I got you.
Who wants to discuss the dull mess that was this season of LIB?
Beautiful Maggie. Happy Birthday ❤️