On War and Words

As I was writing this post I couldn't help but think of the little boy who was obsessed with little plastic army men. He would lay out elaborate battles. Sound effects would roar from him as the battle played out. That obsession never really went away. It morphed into drawing battles, reading about batttles, an obsession with eras of weapons and armor and types of warfare.

All this from possibly the most tender hearted little boy on Earth. I asked our psychiatrist about it once. I was having a hard time reconciling the huge difference between his character and this obsession. Our doctor explained in a way that I had never considered. He said that for our son his ADHD, his anxiety, his OCD were all things he batttled everyday. Like the wars he orchestrated he was fighting his own battle with his mind.

One of those struggles was writing. In fact, I have written about it before on here many times. We were in the middle of that struggle when I started blogging about ADHD. He couldn't organize his thoughts enough to write. It was painful to watch him struggle through a sentence. Paragraphs were laughable and an essay was impossible. His handwritng was part of that problem. Too many thoughts racing through his mind certainly didn't help.

After years of work he wants to be a writer. He already has three book series planned. If you would have told me when he was seven or that he would be in Honors English in high school I would have laughed. But here we are and here he is. Tonight he shared this poem he wrote as an assignment on war. This is what he turned in. It has no title yet

War

Dark and Light, a tale of woe

Off to war, to battle we go

To bitter ends we march away

We fight to live another day

They’ve gone and slain the peaceful dove

Now we must fight for those we love

And though they plead and beg and cry

To protect our own we’ll gladly die

It is not grand to end a life

For all that brings is grief and strife

It stays with you both day and night

A horrid endless guilty blight

Dark and Light, I say adieu

But know my words, this song is true

For war is hell and blood is shed

Now off I go to join the dead