𑣲┆hopeless war ˚.⋆ֹ
24/08/26 — ☆
today, it became clear that i'm fighting in a war.
not actual war, obviously. i'm a teenage girl in nowhere, nc. the closest i have ever been to a battlefield is probably watching a movie about it. but today, in english, we read "the sniper" and "the man he killed," and we had to talk about how conflict develops. and, unfortunately, i think i finally understand it now.
because there's this guy.
and he is, for lack of a better word, evil.
i don't mean evil in the historical sense. he has not invaded any countries. he does not have a military. as far as i know, he has never ordered an airstrike. but he has somehow managed to create an entire war.
and now there is another guy. and there is me. and somehow, we are the soldiers.
which is particularly inconvenient because i did not enlist. not purposefully, anyway.
i think that's the weirdest thing about conflict. sometimes you don't actually choose to be someones enemy. you just.. end up standing on opposite sides of something, and suddenly you're expected to act like the person across from you is the problem.
that's basically what happens in "the sniper." the sniper is fighting someone because they're on opposite sides of a larger political conflict. he shoots the other sniper, and only afterward discovers that he's killed his own brother. which is, objectively, a terrible family reunion. and in "the man he killed," the narrator realizes that the man he shot wasn't really some horrible enemy. under different circumstances, they might have sat together at an inn and had a drink.
that's the part that gets me.
imagine being so deeply involved in a conflict that you forget the person on the other side is still just a person.
deep down, i don't think guy 2 is really the enemy i make him out to be. i just think guy 1 is the war. and somehow, guy 2 and i are standing on opposite sides of the battlefield holding metaphorical rifles and going, "well. this is awkward."
the stupid thing is that neither of us probably woke up one day and thought, "you know what would improve my life? beefing with my old friends."
but war doesn't really start like that. it starts from something small, and then it grows.
someone says something. someone takes a side. someone gets offended. someone tells someone else. suddenly there are sides, and then there are people on those sides, and then those people are expected to hate each other because apparently that's how this works. and eventually you look across the battlefield and realize: wait. that's just a person.
maybe that's why those stories stuck with me; war makes strangers into enemies. and sometimes, if you're unlucky enough, it can make friends into enemies, too.
anyway, if you need me, i'll be in the trenches