"An open letter to Riverbend (HW28)"

Dear Riverbend,

After reading your blog posts up to August 30th, 2003. At first I didn't know if I was going to be able to handle all of the things that you were going to talk about in your posts. I haven't really paid much attention to the war or the repercussion of it, but now I guess there is a first for everything. First off, I wanted to start out by telling you that your post descriptions get me excited to read every blog. I can tell when something good has happened or when your feeling down or when something chaotic has happened. This makes me want to read more and more all the time.
I was very shocked to see how terrible it is over there for you. I could never handle living in fear all the time and have to deal with all of the constant fighting. To be able to sit on your roof top at night and listen to the sounds of different guns with your brother and point out which kind they are amazes me. That shows how long this has been going on for. For a 13 year old and a 24 year old to know what type of gun is being fired in the middle of the night, it must be ridiculously violent all of the time over there.
In your post titled "Chaos" you mentioned how 400 women were abducted, and these were only the ones that were accounted for by the Americans because most of the time the male family members would go out looking without telling anybody. How did you deal with living like that? How could you handle knowing that such terrible things were happening and they could just as easily happen to you? I would never be able to live in that type of world.
My favorite thing that you said throughout your post so far was in your post labeled "My new talent". You stated,

"No one is 13 anymore. No one is 24 anymore...everyone is 85 and I think I might be 105."

This to me shows how run down everybody gets from the war. People who are 13 and 24 years old are forced to grow up so much quicker. And once they grow up they are forced to grow even older quicker. To live in such chaos and mayhem everyday baffles me and I could never cope with it. I am utterly speechless when it comes to how brave and courageous you are to handle this.