my personal hero

The other day somebody showed me a photo of an elderly man. He looked absolutely normal, nothing special. However, that guy was an air force pilot during the World War II and consequently a kind of national hero here in the U.K.

English people love that. I mean, they are really proud of their war veterans. Culturally, it caught my eye when I arrived to this country because Spain didn't take part in WWII. I'm pretty sure that Franco would have been on Hitler's side, so, just as well Spain was trying to recover from its Civil War, which wasn't quite the same. In a civil war you don't fight against another country, you do it against your neighbor, or even worst, your enemy could be a member of your own family.

After a war, a crisis. It's time to rebuild what was destroyed. Economy, infrastructures, families (of course there is no way to bring back those ones lost in a war but the sense of family has to be rebuilt). In that scenario my personal hero was born. It is someone who has fought all her life to keep her family close and definitely, she is one of the pillars which holds up our family.

Now I see her as a veteran of her own personal war. It is time to go home and rest but she can't, she still has to carry on fighting day by day. I'd like to be there to help her, to carry some of the weight on my shoulders but it's not the right time. 

I'm a prisoner of my own decisions, trapped between what I was and what I'd like to become. My freedom is every day closer, which makes staying away from my family harder. 

It will happen. Someday I'll go back home and those brave ones who deserve a rest will be able to have it.