It’s been four days since the ceasefire. It’s been so heavy, so agonizing, so surreal that I can describe it but I am not allowing myself to feel. I haven’t cried once.
I can’t bring myself to reflect back on the last two months, and I can’t bring myself to think of what is coming. I can’t bring myself to feel whatever we should be feeling, because I am so scared. I’m terrified in a way my bones ache. But I am at peace.
It’s like I have been carrying my weight and everyone’s weight on my shoulders. And on the morning of the ceasefire, all this weight was gone. I felt so much lighter. I ate with so much joy, I rode a motorcycle for three hours, I walked my baby nephew under the rain. I felt terrified. and I felt peace.
Today, I was driving my car and I put music on the radio. It was the first time since the war began. It finally felt right. We sang along and I sped and I looked to my right, to the road that leads to my house in Dahyeh, and for the first time in two months, I didn’t feel like if I mistakenly went to the right I will be swallowed by the darkness.
It’s over. The fear of loved ones getting killed, the fear of losing my house, my childhood, my neighborhood. The fear of feeling selfish and privileged for being alive. The feeling of being stuck in an abyss, it’s gone now.
I haven’t sat once with myself since all this started, and even before. And I can’t dare to think of sitting with myself. Even during the night, I would go to bed very sleepy that staying awake is an effort on its own. I only sat once on my own that one time the day after my birthday; but I wasn’t really alone. A dark enigma sat next to me and fed off my flesh and skin. It drained idyll from my body and replaced it with pain. So it really doesn’t count as being alone.
My life should be back to notmal soon, I hope. Right now I feel like I don’t have a routine anymore, which scared me, and I am rushing by. But I will fi myself. I promise. I’ll go back to being closer to normal; I just don’t know when.
But I am glad it’s over. And I am so very glad of the inner peace I feel, of the olive branch on my arm. I am so very glad you exist in my life. I would not have endured this without you.