Syrians need a big fat hug from the world

Man has always been afraid of the unknown. But to live the unknown every day of your life, in all its aspects, its simplest details, and with the minimum amount of needs, is something that has gone beyond the limits of fear. I cannot say today that we, as Syrians, are afraid, we do not represent the general rule of the fear of the unknown, because we have broken that rule by transcending the limits of the unknown. Today we are no longer alive like the rest of humanity, and the laws and rules of human beings no longer represent us. It would be better for psychologists to come here to introduce a new school of psychology and call it "Syrian human beings".

I still can't believe I threw away ten years of my life in the garbage. This pain and agony bangs inside my head over and over again, in my conscious and subconscious. What seems even more painful is that those ten years were not only stolen from you, but from the life of your loved ones as well. You want to get ahead of this country in harvesting the years of your life, but it always does it before you. “This land has ripped the years of my life from me!” is the phrase I have written down as a prayer, and always repeat it, every night. “This land has ripped the years of my life from me”, and even the years of my mother, sister, and loved ones. So how can I forgive these years?

What seems even more painful is that those ten years were not only stolen from you, but also from the life of your loved ones. You want to get ahead of this country in reaping the years of your life, but it always does it before you

As a child, I was always waiting to become a young woman. Everything was beautiful. I was confident that my future would be even more beautiful. My mother was always traveling outside the country since she worked in trade and imports. She’d always promise me to take me with her to various countries for tourism and to see the world. It wasn't a dream, because my dreams were bigger than just a plane ticket. In my eyes, it was an inevitable and eventual reality that I will definitely do with my mother, but what happened? Here I am today, living within a vortex of an unknown fate, like every other Syrian, with many dreams, the biggest of which is a plane ticket, encountering wave after wave of depression, frustration, and a sense of uselessness. I, a young woman in her twenties, feel useless! I only have one image in my mind to explain where this feeling is coming from: "It is like having one day to live and you’re only allowed to sit alone between four walls. You don't hate solitude, you don't fear confined spaces, and you won't bang your head against four walls when you have nothing to face but them, but it is your only day, your last day. It is something that cannot be repeated... It’s the years of your life.”

How can we feel useful when we see our lives being taken away from us? I wonder who will give us another try in this life?

Living here is like being a child who hasn't learned to walk yet, but has to run fast to survive. Today, we are racing against time to survive, running at full speed to catch up with life, development, technology, and job opportunities at home and abroad, but without anyone teaching us how to do it. We are just like the “Companions of the Cave" (the story of a group of young men who fell asleep in a cave and woke up 300 years later), because everything for us has stopped here, and everything carried on outside. Survival never takes our circumstances into account, as life has completely washed its hands of responsibility for what happened to the Syrians, and no one cares about us.

Living here is like being a child who hasn't learned to walk yet, but has to run fast to survive

Syrians need a big fat hug from the whole world. If Syrians poured out their hearts in tears, they would drown the entire world. Not a single person in this country wanted to be ordinary. Every single person I have met here had dreams higher than skyscrapers. Ever since the first question we are asked in the classroom, “What do you want to be?”, no one’s answer was to become like they are today.

I think back on my memories. All those dreams that I have witnessed during the years of my life, all the passing people from my childhood to this day. The size of those dreams was enough to build and advance the whole world, not just a country. The size of those energies, that passion, the hope and determination was enough to make this country the most beautiful in the world. We have a human wealth as immense as any fruitful land; we have ‘human oil’ that has been consumed just by death, not for heating or lighting, just for death and gunpowder.

"Syrians need a big fat hug from the whole world. If Syrians poured out their hearts in tears, they would drown the entire world.."

Next time my dear country, the next time you ask your children what they want to be in the future, take their answers seriously. Do not carry them inside the barrel of a gun and ask them to come out of it alive and eager for life.

Those who defended to build a homeland did so with their blood, while those with determination remained shackled and bound by the specter of death and disappointment.

Next to every living person on this earth is a grave and a eulogy for their dreams, as if we are in the afterlife portrayed in the movies when they tell stories about ghosts, and the crossing gate is merely a passport to pass into the human world.

“That's what I want to be; to one day cross into the human world.”

* The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Raseef22