We take these big steps as toddlers. Children skip and leap ahead. Blessed are those who continue. I see my peers around me and most of us now are taking baby-steps into our twenties - if walking at all. An element of our growth cycles was removed or diminished drastically. Our slender stalks and shabby branches testify to this. There was something missing that we needed or something harmful that was present in our younger stages. The damage makes us lag behind the others who were nourished well. We struggled to grow in unfavorable conditions and struggled to hang on to our desire to live. The soldiers who made it through childhood find themselves struggling now to remove the shrapnel from their limbs and the scars from their hearts just to live again. There is no desire to or use for remaining in the struggle as adults, but the struggle will not leave them.