In the beginning, silence was my prison. I hid my brokenness as if it were a disgrace, thinking that seeking help meant surrendering to madness.
But the real “madness” was the quiet gnawing at my mind every night. My condition worsened, and escape became impossible, so I knocked on digital doors and began online therapy sessions, hoping the screen would act as a wall shielding me from the weight of reality.
But how do you heal a wound when you’re still bleeding on the battlefield?
I sat before the therapist, separated by distances and wires, yet my eyes betrayed me. They fled the camera to stare at the ruins outside. My room’s walls were entirely gone, leaving me exposed to the destruction.
I tried to talk about “recovery,” but my words faltered in my throat, stuck between what I felt and what I could say. How can I speak of healing while devastation stares at me from every corner of the neighborhood? I saw how everything had fallen and how I remained.
The survivor who doesn’t feel like a survivor.
In those moments, questions exploded in my mind like shells: How can I ever forget what my eyes have seen? The loss, the displacement, the chaos that unfolded…
I realized that my therapy couldn’t be complete while my surroundings still weighed on me with the echoes of the past. The session would end, but the scene did not. The therapist would close the camera, and I would remain alone, facing the bare truth: that I live in a house laid bare by war, inhabiting a body violated by trauma.
I do not ask for a perfect life, nor do I seek boundless happiness… I only want a life.
This is all I wish for: a very ordinary life, where I don’t wake up terrified by a sound that no one else hears.
I am Aseel, a writer from Gaza, living amid genocide and famine. Your support can help my family survive. https://chuffed.org/project/138285-help-sehwel-family-with-their-medical-treatment