Forgiving is not an easy thing to do.
I'm not afraid of IED's, bullets, mortars.
I, too, was carrying around my own fate. All the things I couldn't know sat somewhere inside, embroidered into me-maybe not quite fixed to the point of inevitability but waiting, in any event, for a chance to unspool.
Getting on a plane is hard for me, but I do it, because travel is vital to me.
I don't think I'm unusual in that, in my 20s, like many people, I felt invincible.
We all waited on an afterlife. Only I planned to be alive for mine.