To Be Loved

Do you know this feeling where you just want to be loved? You want to be recognized by someone and know that you are worth loving. It’s like the constant rush for appreciation, not so much love itself. You want to be held, kissed, you want to be important to someone. 

And because you’re human, you return that appreciation. After one, maybe more, weeks, it just fades away into nothingness, until you are left with someone who doesn’t love you, but just wants to be loved. 

Shame, that’s what washed over me when I realized this. I had used someone for the soul purpose of being told I was loved. I couldn’t see it then, for I was blinded by the idea I could fight everything, because someone thought I could.

The same person had used me too, the exact same reason in his head as it was in mine, so at the end, it didn’t truly feel like I alone was at fault. I wanted to be recognized and he wanted attention, it was a perfect match made in Hell, but it felt like Heaven to me.

Now I’ve realized we both didn’t do anything wrong. We were trying to get back up from our previous battle and just needed a helping hand, a smiling face to tell us we could do it. I was his, he was mine. And now we are ourselves again.

We All Fall

I know I’m human, like everyone else, and maybe it’s arrogant of me to say this, but I never expected to get shot. Perhaps the red cross on my arm made me feel safe or was it the unrealistic dream that people knew they weren’t supposed to take me down. I was a medic after all.

Is this what they felt? All the people I’ve helped before, as they lay crippled in the sand, seconds before it’d swallow them whole? This burning ache in their chest, which wouldn’t stop, no matter how hard they screamed, no matter how many prayers they spoke, this was their reality.

My reality.

I think it’s fair to say that I was in pain. I had never understood it, not completely. I had seen people cry out loud for their mother as the torturer stripped them from their breath, and now that he marvelled over me, I couldn’t hold back my grunting.

It was almost funny. It could’ve been a joke, would’ve been a joke if it wasn’t myself laying there. Running towards me, silent but swift, was a medic.

A medic who came to help another medic. 

I told you it could’ve been a joke. And I would’ve laughed, if it hadn’t been for the devil who send acid through my veins. My face flashed in horror and pain, the expression I had seen often enough to know what it looked like.

Was this revenge? From all those I couldn’t save, to make sure I’d respect them more? Because if it was, it worked.

Their history had become my own. Their yesterday my reality. And I’d make sure their tomorrow, would be my today. 

The short story was based on the picture above, of a medic being helped by another medic during D-Day.