Silence, Wishes and the Torment of War

Kristen Field was never able to tell Brennan that she loved him. Now he's serving his country in a foreign land rapidly being reduced to ruins, and Kristen fears he may never know.

Kristen is a freshman at UC Berkeley and Brennan, whose last name is not being printed for safety reasons, is a U.S. Marine who left for Central Asia soon after the tragedies of Sept. 11.

"He (has) the most piercing eyes I have ever seen in my entire life," she says. "If you don't see anything else of his face, you will see his eyes. It doesn't even matter, however far away he is."

She tried to get in touch with him when he went home before he shipped out. But she never had the chance because he never made it home-the military wouldn't allow it.

Soon after Sept. 11, news came that Brennan was being sent overseas.

"I knew right then that I had to tell him," Kristen says. "I even knew what I was gonna say. I was gonna tell him that our friendship meant the world to me, that I miss him, and love him, and to be careful."

It was too late.

"I was gonna call on Sunday. It was Sunday that he asked his girlfriend to marry him," she says.

"I never told him because I was scared. I let fear take over, and now I live with 'what ifs' and regret. I will walk around my whole life and wonder, could we have been together if I would've told him? Maybe we still have a chance, but I never got to tell him I loved him, and maybe never will."

Kristen felt a connection between them as soon as they met, maybe even before.

Her freshman year of high school, Brennan's younger brother threatened to stuff her into a trash can.

Kristen stood up for herself and he backed down, but she never forgot the trash can incident.

But when the boy happened to move into the apartment above hers a year later, they met as friends.

The boy had two older brothers, one of whom was Brennan. Kristen met him a couple of weeks after his family moved in when he came downstairs to use her phone. They started talking and quickly became friends.

It wasn't long before Brennan was sneaking Kristen out of class at lunch to go hang out. He had her come to all his football games and soon became very protective of her.

"No one would mess with me and get away with it," Kristen says.

Unfortunately, he also had a girlfriend who wasn't happy with the time that Kristen and Brennan were spending together. The girlfriend told Brennan how she felt, and he broke off his relationship with Kristen.

"We went from being best friends to not even speaking. To make matters worse, I was totally in love with him," Kristen says.

They didn't speak again for months. Kristen would see him and not acknowledge his presence. Despite their fallout, Kristen attended his graduation because she had promised him that she would.

It was at graduation when she found out that he was heading to boot camp.

Kristen had known that he was interested in joining the Marines, but now it was real.

When he went off to boot camp, they got back into touch with one another. Through letters, Brennan immediately asked if she had a boyfriend. Kristen's hopes for a relationship beyond friendship were lifted by this, and Brennan would be coming home soon.

But Kristen wasn't there when he came home.

"I was still upset from the first time he hurt me," she says.

Brennan continued to come in and out of Kristen's life. After one particular encounter with him, when she had a boyfriend, she realized that her feelings for Brennan had not changed. She had to tell him how she felt.

They continued to stay in contact, but little changed. Then, three days before she came to UC Berkeley, she finally saw him in person.

"I told him that I was leaving and he told me he knew. I didn't even know what to say. It was the first time we'd spoken in months," Kristen says.

She had found out that Brennan had a girlfriend, and she couldn't bring herself to reveal her long-withheld feelings.

Then the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 happened.

"(I felt) complete disgust, heartbreak," Kristen says. "I couldn't eat. I was so distraught, I just wanted to cling to everyone. It just made me realize that I had wasted way too much time over petty bullshit."

She called Brennan's mother to ask her to relay messages to him. Brennan's immediate family are the only people who can directly contact him.

"He's not allowed make any contact for two weeks. He could get shipped away, and he can't make make any contact, not even his mom," Kristen says.

He wasn't even supposed to say goodbye, Kristen says.

Immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks, Kristen wanted retaliatory action.

"I wanted to level with somebody," she says. "Somebody had to pay. But at the time, I didn't realize what the cost would be."

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