September

"I don't care what you think as long as it's about me." -Fall Out Boy

I can't imagine.

I can't imagine what it's like being on the front line of war. I can't imagine leaving behind everything one has for a chance at death and to see your brother die. I can't imagine World War 2, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

It must take a lot for an 18 year old to enlist. Mostly because I'm 21 and still a child; second because war is so cruel that there is no room for emotion and fear. Boys are and have always been raised in a culture where it's unacceptable to show weakness and ask for help. They're trained to be even more robotic as they head into combat for months, shipped to who knows where, away from friends- from family, from anywhere where they could feel at ease.

And so many do it with dignity. These boys see and are forced to do horrendous things often for a government's political agenda; men in their 50s and 60s behind their desks wondering how to advance their country while boys in their teens and twenties are dying.

History books write about political figures so valiantly and their countries so patriotically that we get a shrewd perception of the event and of the equally painful suffering from the other side. The axis and the allies, we paint one side patriotically and the other side as though they're evil doers while on each side men were laying their lives on the line.

I don't believe what the United States did during the World Wars were right. To portray it as a celebratory event for this country can't be right. The men did what they had to but killing thousands of people who had futures and aspirations shouldn't be a celebratory event.

We throw parades for a day or two, then their bravery but more importantly their pain along with their families' pain is forgotten. They go into war as boys with obnoxious, annoying, boyish innocence and if they come back, they bear an unimaginable amount of pain and guilt.

Learning Vietnam's history from American history books is difficult but not as difficult as hearing the heart wrenching songs written by soldiers in the front line of that war.

I believe it's great that there's a lot of concentration and advancement for women and women's rights. Women seem to be more vocal when it comes to their fights and to get the abuse or emotional pain they've suffered out there. Men, and especially young men, contrarily barely speak about abuse or emotional pain, let along fight for it. Depression is higher in men along with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; there seems to be very little attention paid to that and a barely visible fight for men who aren't encouraged to speak and who've been through a lot in their lives. There's definitely a lower level of tolerance for male emotions.

I don't know; I feel as though my Asian side is very traditional in a sense that I believe that in the busy effort of trying to get ahead, women no longer take care of their men. Men as stoic as they are, don't know how to open up to their families, and it creates another cycle of pain as well as many generations of children who don't appreciate their fathers nearly as much as they appreciate their mothers.

Sometimes I hate men, but I understand and I feel for the fathers and brothers out there. People celebrate their homecomings but no one seems to recognize their wars abroad, their wars with poor neighborhoods and bad living conditions at home, and their continuing internal wars when they come home and actually have to live with the horror they've experienced.