Surviving the war physically doesn’t mean we survived it mentally

During the genocide, many foreign friends stood with us in ways I’ll never forget. Some donated, some wrote, some just stayed present through messages when everything around us was falling apart. One of them a kind woman from Europe once told me she wanted to find a psychologist for me and my family.

At first, I didn’t even know how to react. I felt shocked, almost offended. I told her, please don’t ever say that again. I thought she didn’t understand us that we just needed food, safety, maybe a roof. Not therapy. But she gently insisted, saying it might help after everything we’ve been through.

I stopped replying to her messages for a while after that. Something about her words made me feel small, or maybe seen in a way I wasn’t ready for. And over the weeks that followed, I began noticing changes in myself: how short my temper had become, how easily I snapped at my brother or got angry at small things.

Then I realized they were right. Something in us changed. The way we see and understand things isn’t the same anymore. We’ve become quick to judge, quick to shout, and always on edge. We interpret every word and gesture through our pain.

It’s terrifying when you notice it when you realize that the war might have ended outside, but it’s still alive inside you.

We’re people who survived the bombs physically, yes but I can say with certainty that 99% of us in Gaza have been deeply wounded psychologically. We don’t see things as they are anymore, only as our wounds let us see them.

I’ll end with a quote from Mikhail Naimy’s Memoirs of the Vagrant a passage I read long ago, and now it makes painful sense:

“If I were to engrave three words at the end of every book ever written, and carve them beneath every statue, paint them beneath every portrait, or whisper them at the end of every poem or speech, they would be these: ‘That’s what I thought.’ For no matter how precise and eloquent we try to be, language is too small to contain the depth of our emotions and thoughts. Truth lives in silence, not in speech. And silence is veiled by the words that try to express it.”

Even now, after surviving the bombs, we feel that silence every day. The war may have left our streets, but it hasn’t left our minds. We are struggling to heal, to find support that can help us process what we’ve been through. If you are able, your contribution toward psychological support for people like us in Gaza can make a life changing difference. Every bit helps us begin to reclaim peace of mind.