Liberia has not been leaving me alone for the last month or so. I haven’t been there since 1988, since I was a confused, hurting 11-year-old with nut brown skin and white-blonde braids. But it has been chasing me down.

My last house in Monrovia-pic taken by a friend of my parents.

I have a post up today at Red Letter Christians that explains my thoughts about war. Disclaimer: they’re not pretty. Neither is my post. Which is why I didn’t post it here. I don’t want to have to look at it very often, because it hurts, because thinking about it makes me wince in so, so many ways.

Kind of like Liberia, I guess.

In a way, I feel guilty writing about the fleeting experience I had during the 1985 coup attempt. Especially when so many people I love experienced so, so much worse. The real story is not mine. The real story belongs to them.

But my story is all I have to offer, and twenty years later I still do not let my thoughts pause on their stories, the ones I know. The ones that made me lock myself in a bathroom and sob myself sick, praying to Jesus to please, please not let it have happened. To please turn back time and make everything all right.

I’m still not entirely convinced that he didn’t, once, at least.

I don’t know if my friends let their thoughts pause there, either. I’ve never asked, too afraid that my questions would pour out like salt on an open wound. When we do talk, it is about our lives now, maybe the occasional funny memory that acknowledges our shared experience. But we don’t talk about the hard stuff.

I still have lingering questions, though. Not about what happened in Liberia, because I can’t change that. Not about what my friends went through, because that is their story to share or keep silent about, and I would never demand that. But I still don’t even understand what happened in me. Sometime in high school I made the decision to close my eyes to that part of my life, because the violence was overwhelming, the helplessness was crushing, and thinking about it was destroying me, holding me back, when there was nowhere to go but forward. The past wasn’t only inaccessible–the past was going up in flames. But every once in a while, I can still feel the heat on my back, like a sunburn that won’t go away. I still get the feeling that I should turn, that I should look, that I should do something.

I have a feeling I will be writing more about this. But that’s enough for today.