the cause

I know the drill; before you tell me yours, you want mine exposed. To find out what caused the grey zone that I was living in and how I finally escaped it.First, we will consider the cause. She was very young (17) and oh, so very beautiful. Her name was Min Wie. She lived with her family in the village just outside the compound where I lived. I met her at the market. I was only 20; very clumsy and nervous around such a beauty as her. She thought that it was funny; big, tough G.I. who couldn't look at a shy young lady in the eyes without his face getting red. Well, I somehow managed to introduce myself and a wonderful and loving relationship was born. After a couple of months, we had breeched the language barrier with a splendid combination of guttural English and broken Vietnamese. To say that I had fallen in love was an understatement. We had even started to make arrangements to be married. I planned to bring her home and love her for the rest of our lives.I flew dust off (Medivac, picking up the injured or mortally wounded via helicopter) and it was the season to be very busy. One day, Min had gone to the regional hospital because of what we thought was a stomach virus. I was off on a mission. When she returned to her village, the Viet Cong (V.C.) started to shell what they thought was the compound. They undershot their mark and completely destroyed the village. When I returned and saw what used to be the village, I ran as fast as I could to discover her family had died. I hoped that she had not suffered the same fate. Nervously, I searched the destroyed village. I found my beautiful Asian princess lying face down in a pool of blood, not 4 feet from a mortar hole. In her hand she clutched a prescription. I removed it and read that it was for pre-natal vitamins; Min had died, plus my unborn child. OK, so I'm crying now. This re-telling is never easy. I erroneously surmised that if I had not gone, I would never have had to face this tragedy.For years, every time I met someone who could have gone but didn't, the resentment would rise like a rocket. I learned to hate because I figured they were spared all of the pain that I had to suffer. Furthermore, I figured that if they had gone and helped, maybe Min would have lived and maybe my child would have lived also. Piss-poor logic, I admit, but it was so strong and the resentment ran so deep that it was impossible to see that whether they had gone or not, it wouldn't have changed anything.I buried my child and my beautiful Min in a shallow grave away from the village. I felt that all of our hopes, the love, and the dreams that we shared were ripped from my heart and replaced by a horrible grey cloud that lived within me. A cloud so thick, that you couldn't see through it to see me and I could hide behind it, hopefully forever.So, despite the tears and sobbing that I am now going through, having told this story again, you see the cause; an event that I couldn’t escape for many years.Coming next: The cure. Eli

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