Status Updates From Testament of Youth

“how curious it seems that letters are so much less vulnerable than their writers.”
- v.b.

Italy, with its new scenes and experiences, had made all the difference; in spite of Asiago, in spite of Louvencourt, those weeks abroad had somehow healed the acutest soreness of the War's deep hurt. After them, apart from occasional dreams, I had no more hallucinations nor night terrors nor insomnia, and by the . . . end of the year . . . I was nearly a normal person.

How mean they are, these little strivings, these petty ambitions of us who are left, now that all of you are gone! How can the future achieve, through us, the sombre majesty of the past? Oh, Edward, you're so lonely up here; why can't I stay for ever and keep your grave company, far from the world and it's vain endeavors to rebuild civilisation, on this Plateau where alone there is dignity and peace?

The fact that, within ten years, I lost one world, and after a time rose again, as it were, from spiritual death to find another, seems to me one of the strongest arguments against suicide that life can provide.

Too miserable to light the fire or even to get into bed, I lay on the cold floor and wept with childish abandonment. Why couldn't I have died in the War with the others? . . . Why couldn't a torpedo have finished me, or an aerial bomb, or one of those annoying illnesses? I'm nothing but a piece of wartime wreckage, living on ingloriously in a world that doesn't want me!

in which love would seem threatened perpetually by death, and happiness appear a house without duration, built upon the shifting sands of chance. I might, perhaps, have it again, but never again should I hold it. [3/3]

Only gradually did I realise that the War had condemned me to live to the end of my days in a world without confidence or security, a world in which every dear personal relationship would be fearfully cherished under the shadow of apprehension; [1/2]

The immediate result of peace – the cessation of direct threats to one's personal safety – was at first almost imperceptible, just as a prolonged physical pain which has turned from acuteness into an habitual dull ache can cease altogether without the victim noticing that it has gone. [2/3]

How would the War ultimately have affected me? I wondered, looking with dull eyes into a singularly empty future, which seemed capable of being filled only by individual efforts that I did not feel in the least inclined to make. [1/3]