BEFORE AND AFTER

            The worst part is waiting.  You don’t know until it starts.  You play it all in your head before it ever comes.  Some of it happens.  Some of it does not, but you see and play the contingencies, anticipating first contact, response, and follow-on actions before they ever rise.  It fires then wears your nerves, and you don’t know what it will be until it starts…
            You’re sick in your stomach.  Your mouth waters and you feel like you will vomit.  Sometimes you do.  Then it’s like a kickoff to the game…first hit, contact, and it all begins.  Maybe it is Hell.  Maybe it is less, but once it starts, the worry ends.  Whatever it is, it must be endured.  You just fight, whatever the fight is.  You deal and address—identify, reduce, refocus, and repeat.  You push through, keep going, and you will worry on it after—if you ever do. 
            It won’t all make sense.  It won’t all be good, but looking back, you’ll be surprised.  Even in the ugliness, you witness some of the greatest beauty—in the world, and in Man.  It is something to be lived, endured, experienced, and—even if you never give it sense—you end grateful it has passed, that the chapter is closed, to have seen and lived through what has been, and you continue with greater gratitude in the after for all you could not appreciate before—before it all was lived.