Mary Anne

It took me a while to figure out the story of Mary Anne but then it hit me that I was staring at myself in a way. Mary and I are the classic tell of how war is the destroyer of innocence and the bringer of knowledge and that knowledge can become wisdom when well tampered, but Mary didn't gain any wisdom. I resent her, where she gave up her innocence I did all that I could to hold on to what I had left. She entered the war, that jungle on her on accord; as for myself I had no choice in the matter, I was enlisted like the other men. She wanted to be there, I didn't. We both learned things, took things in, but unlike her I fought against some of it but I learned anyway. Like her I became a fighter,a survivor, and almost an animal. That was the line that Mary Anne crossed but I refused. I almost did though I was right on the edge ready to fall. I could feel the animal inside of me becoming stronger but at the sometime I felt myself dying. Innocence does make one naive and a fool, but is it wrong to want to have something poor about you have some sort of light inside of you that's still good, kind, and loving. I wanted to keep that so I turned on the animal that I had given life inside of me and buried it I walked away with painful and deadly knowledge that I hope is slowly turning into wisdom. Mary Anne just through that all away. So when I look at Mary Anne I see what I nearly became I see what I know I can do.

But I have to smile at Mary Anne and feel a little sad for, because even though she is no longer innocent she is still in many way very naive. Because she went into the war of her own free will she has still yet to learn what it's like to be beaten lower than the ground and get back up and take it again. She has been living on a high horse aging people on to fight her, she thinks she's unbeatable. But she will fall eventually and she will be beaten down very low. She will have to learn how to open her eye's look around and see that no one is there to help her and that the people that are there either have there backs turned or are standing over her ready to grind her back down, she has to bend her elbow and knees hunch over and stand up ready to fight and take it again. And do it over and over again. This is the lesson she still has to learn. Painful lesson but a needed one. There is a self filling sense about this lesson. It's just helps you feel stronger being able to say when the war is over "I got back up again and fought."