Sometimes I want you to know how that I fight myself during the day, every day, even if everything seems fine on the outside. Sometimes I want you to know about the sleepless nights, about me waking up in the middle of the night with a racing pulse, shaking, dripping with sweat. About what it's like to close your eyes and imagine bodies in different positions or people who I know are no longer there. Sometimes I want you to know that it's not just me but others too, friends I've met on my journey, and we're all traumatized to some extent since Black Saturday.
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"Black Saturday." It's not just another slogan. Because when you are fleeing quickly somewhere between life and death, you do everything, but everything, just so you don't collapse, so you don't lose your sanity amid all the horrible thoughts. And it's the easiest to get lost there, both physically and mentally.
Sometimes I want you to know how much pain and bereavement lingers in my heart every time the military allows the publication of terrible news or another shocking video from captivity, when I know that I was so close to that place myself. Sometimes I want you to know that it is impossible to deny pain, sights, sounds, smells and, above all, such pure fear for your life with every step you take, and what it feels like not to move for 8.5 hours.
Sometimes I want you to know that "Wow, you lost weight" is not always a compliment, because how can I explain that for weeks I was unable to eat anything while the smell of burnt corpses remained in my nose. So I smile and say "thank you."
Sometimes I want you to know that every time I leave the house I'm accompanied by no less than a liter of water, long pants, closed shoes and a spare jacket, because who knows what will meet you on the way, and that for a moment you will not lack fluids in your body like when I dried out in the hot sun without moving.
Sometimes I want you to know that any "normal" noise on the street – such as a garbage truck, a siren, a loud knock, talking in the middle of the night and even when the sun is out – can be frightening to the point of palpitations that I feel in my temples. Sometimes it is the silence, the silence that is so loud.
Sometimes I want you to know that for every moment we live we should be thankful for what we have, literally, and not bother with the problems that happened yesterday or some annoying jerk that overtook me at a traffic light. It's better to try and think that maybe a baby is waiting for him at home. Because we should take nothing for granted. Sometimes I want you to know that my pain, ours, has no price. Nor our loss. Nor our life.
Sometimes I want you to know that this war takes a lot of energy from me and I wish I could give more of myself, but I find myself so tired. Because even after countless treatments, the mind is still wounded and still remembers. Sometimes I want you to know that every morning presents a new choice: should you get up and live or stay in bed?
And it's literally a split second where I go back and my heart is bleeding, bleeding from pain. And when I choose to get up together with the pain, together with the bleeding heart, I continue to fight every little thing that takes me back. I keep remembering that I have a role in the world that I still have to fulfill, that I still have to live. So I'm no longer a survivor, I'm a fighter.
Orian Shtaif is a nursing student at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev