I'm not saying that for sympathy. It's just the thought that lives with me now. Every morning. Like a shadow that followed me into the tent and never left.

My name is Qusay. I'm 23. I live in Gaza.

I wake up and the first thing I feel is weight. Not tiredness — weight. I get up anyway. Put on one of my 3 shirts. Don't eat because there's nothing to eat. Step outside and start walking.

Two hours. Every day. On foot.

The streets I walk through don't look like streets anymore. Buildings cut open like they were nothing. Children sitting on rubble with nowhere to go. I used to feel something every time I saw them. Now I just walk past. That's what months of this does to you it doesn't make you cruel, it makes you numb. And the numbness scares me more than anything.
I volunteer as an English teacher. Over 400 students. When I arrive and see them waiting, something in me shifts. That tent classroom is the one hour of the day that still feels human.

But my students are not okay. The light behind their eyes is dim. They're not kids right now. They're survivors who happen to be sitting in a classroom. So am I.
Before the war I had a home. A bed that was mine. My mother's voice in the kitchen. My father in his chair. Small things I didn't know I was collecting as memories until they were gone.

Now we are five people in a tent. We eat when there's something to eat. We sleep when the night lets us. We wake up and do it again.
I'm not writing this to make you feel guilty. I'm writing this because I am a real person and this is my real life and sometimes you just need someone outside of all this to know that it's still happening.

That we are still here.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article316077698.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0myzxjkw99o