ginny

I've been reading Vera Brittain's memoir of the First World War, Testament of Youth. I cannot even begin to describe the emotions this book is putting me through. Never has a book made me so gut-wrenchingly sad and horrified. I want to stop reading it, because I don't want to be the crazy crying lady anymore, and yet I am absolutely determined that I must finish it because I feel if I don't, the lives lived and lost within these pages will have been lived and lost in vain. As Vera was determined to finish her service as a nurse to somehow bring her understanding closer to that of her fiance's, brother's and friends' in the trenches, I must finish this book to understand this incredible loss that Vera and an entire generation felt.

I am so miserable and so alive.