For the past few days, I have not truly been myself, and I may now never be. I hate myself for being too emotionally fragile. I feel envy for people who see the pain in the world and then move on with their lives, while I linger on and keep thinking about it for days, sometimes months.
A few months ago, I ran over a cat — a kitten, actually — and it haunted me for months. I still haven’t forgotten her dying face and broken bones. I cried a lot that day and still do whenever I remember it. I regret riding my bike too fast, and I will never forgive myself for it.
The ongoing war in Gaza has shaken me. The amount of death and destruction I have seen in the last 30 days is something I haven’t witnessed in my entire lifetime. The visuals of mothers crying over their infants’ dead bodies, children crying for their parents, grandfathers crying for their grandchildren, a child crying incessantly and saying that he is going to complain to God, the visuals of children writing their names on their wrists so they can be identified after their death, a man losing his four children, he laments and cries as he attempts barehandedly to dig in the rubble of his bombarded house to rescue them, but in vain. All this has affected me deeply.
Those images and videos flash in front of my eyes day and night. I see them in my dreams, which keeps waking me up at night. I have not cried as much in the last 10 years as I have in the last 30 days. Palestine has always felt personal. Their pain, their despair, their courage, their struggle — everything. We grew up listening to stories about them from our parents, grandparents, relatives, friends, and friends of friends. They soon became like a distant family. Their pain had always felt like ours.
I can’t talk about this with anyone, and it is painful to keep it inside and be so helpless, which is why I decided to write it down as it was accumulating inside and becoming unbearable. It has been on my mind all the time. I am not able to focus on my work, my life, nothing! Why does the world have to be such an ugly place? Why can’t there be peace!? What has to be the conscience of humans? Is the problem with others being too emotionless or with me being too emotionally weak? I may never get the answer.
I am losing a part of my soul every day. Unable to talk to anyone about this, I began drawing closer to my faith as a way to express myself without fear of judgment or questioning.
I wanted for Palestine to be free, but, in reality, it is free-ing me!
