On the edge of Endurance

A message from a human who no longer wants to appear strong or become a symbol.

I don't want to talk to the world's about my strength, or my patience, or my love. Because speaking of those things has always been taken as proof that I am human. As if humanity is measured only by what I endure, not by what I bleed. As if the moment I lose those traits in a breakdown, I no longer deserve to be seen as human.

I want to talk about our weakness, about the anxiety that never leaves our chests, about our helplessness, which kills us more slowly than the bombs, about the nights we choke on fear, about the helpless, and broken looks in our mother’s eyes, about our trembling hands as we try to comfort those who have lost everything.

I don't always want to appear resilient. Resilience is not a medal we wear with pride; it’s a burden we carry without choice. We stand, not because we're strong, but because we have no other option.

I don't want to feel comfortable. Comfort is a temporary betrayal of memory. A stab in the side of those who can’t feel comfort. To feel the ease is to deny the exhausted their right to rest.

How can I allow myself peace while my people are shackled, besieged, and abandoned? How can I breathe freely while our children fall asleep to the sound of warplanes; and some wake up to find themselves burning alive?

I don’t want the world to show me what awaits me in other lands, just to invite me to hope. I’m not looking for a new homeland; only the possibility of one here.

I want to see hope in my own country; In the faces of my family, in the eyes of the friend who survived, in the laughter of our children running through the streets, in a sky that no longer rains death, in a morning that doesn’t begin with blood, or end in a massacre.

I don't want anyone to help me with words. Words don’t dry a mother’s tears. They don’t stop the bleeding of the land. I want action; action that halts the machine killing my people. Action that confronts my oppressor, not one that negotiates with him.

I want someone who dares to walk beside me through the mud and the fire, not someone who watches from a safe distance, waiting to turn my suffering into their next heroic narrative.

I’m not asking for a miracle. I’m asking for my right; and my people’s right, to live, with dignity and justice.

I don’t want to be a symbol used in speeches or poems. I just want to live; simply, like any other human being.

If you see heroism in my endurance, I see it as endless pain. If you're amazed by what I’ve survived, then ask how many times I’ve collapsed, broken down, and burned out in silence, unseen.

So don’t turn my tears into an inspiring tale. Let them be a warning bell. Let them be the final reason to end this catastrophe.

To be dehumanised is to be stripped of your dignity, reduced to nothing more than an object or a statistic. You are left at the mercy of those who prey on your soul, consuming it piece by piece, day by day, until, in the end, they are permitted to devour your body as well.

As if your existence never mattered, and your pain never counted. It is the slow, suffocating erasure of what makes you human; until all that remains is a shadow of who you once were, or perhaps nothing at all.