The book starts with a punch. “It was love’s absence that let me know how much love mattered.” ❤️‍🩹 I could talk for hours just about the preface, how much I relate to it and how my heart broke a little when I reread it. I initially started this book around 2 years ago after being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, Bell talks about how at a young age she lost the love from their parents and how it affected her own perspective on love. “All the year of my life I thought I was searching for love I found, retrospectively, to be years where I was so only trying to recover what had been lost,” love is so many times talked about like a reward or a goal, we spend so much time trying to reach it that we forget love it’s everywhere, in even the tiniest interactions of our daily life. Love it’s not a trophy you can put on a pedestal, it’s all of our actions that reflect our care for each other. I’m so excited to finally finish this book, last time I left it at around 40%. What are your thoughts on love?

“A welter of emotions filled Azuma. He felt sorry for the Chinese soldiers, thirsty and frightened men who constantly asked for water and reassurance that they would not be killed. But at the same time their cowardice disgusted him. Azuma suddenly felt ashamed for ever having been secretly afraid of the Chinese in previous battles, and his automatic impulse was to dehumanize the prisoners by comparing them to insects and animals.” The chapter prior talked about how indoctrinated were the Japanese people since a young age after WWI, they were taught to die for their country and anything less was seen as unpatriotic, this quote is a perfect example of the dichotomy of war. The general is both sadden by the poor Chinese soldiers that surrender in hope of a kinder outcome, but disgusted that surrender was even an option for them, because it wasn’t for Japan.