Of Broken Guarantees

I wish I didn’t live in a war-torn country.
It’s a staring competition between me and my bathroom mirror reflection as I wash my tears away with chilly running water.
She looks worn with exhaustion and grief. I feel overwhelmed by it, its ghostly claws choking me by the throat so tightly I shudder as I breathe. It’s difficult to contain without spilling out, so it spills, and that’s when I cry.
I look at her, watching me. The mirror girl. My hands are wet where she tucks my hair behind her ear. Both of our eyes are bloodshot.
Good God, I wish I didn’t live in a war-torn country.

When I think this thought, when I say it in my head, I don’t mean I wish I didn’t live in my country.
Or that I wish I had been born elsewhere, some faraway land from here. Someplace safe, reliable, perhaps, with better wages and opportunities galore, now that I’m really painting you a picture—all the things we spent years wishing for. Looking in other places for.
I wouldn’t trade it now. Forget it. I love my country.

I love its people, and how we hold each other together in a grip so solid and yet so gentle to keep us all from falling apart, like dominoes rushing down one by one in a single stretched out whoosh.
I love our language (I’m a linguist, you know, I’ve got a degree and all), the flow of it mellow like cotton candy on your tongue. The song of a nightingale.
I hold the love behind my closed lids for the memories of streets I stumbled and walked and ran as a young girl; our old apartment in another part of the city. The alleyways of my mum’s hometown, half-destroyed now by the enemy’s forces.
Looking back at me as I breathe life into these words is the view just outside my window, golden-capped trees in the park by the church prompting my heart to squeeze with affection. Blue and yellow on the balconies of multi-storey buildings. The whole of it a wordless signifier of love, solidarity. This is who we are.

I love my country in winter, in spring, and in summer and autumn alike.
I love my country even when I wish it were different, even when I grow tired of it. I love it simply because it is mine.
It’s mine. It isn’t theirs to claim, the ones who’ve stepped foot on our soil to do so. You are not welcome here!
I’m angry and I’m scared.
So what I mean when I say I wish I didn’t live in a war-torn country is: I don’t want to die.

I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.
I want to live.
We make jokes around it, and gallow’s humor is one way to cope, but you’re still up for execution in the end. It doesn’t kill fear.
It doesn’t save you.
Well.

I’m still so young. I’m only twenty-two years old, starry-eyed but hardened by the world, traumatized and hopeful nonetheless. There are so many things I still want to do in this life.
I pray every night that I’ll wake up the next morning to see my house and my family unharmed.
I’m lucky. Some people have it worse.
Maybe not lucky enough to have it better, then.
Not like it’s in my power to change it either way. If only.

My parents had me seven years into the marriage. Lately I think a lot about how I wish I’d just been born earlier, so I would have more time. Those seven more years of peace—what wouldn’t I give for that. For a guarantee. Nothing more than a guarantee, but we don’t get to choose our own destinies.

I don’t like to give voice to my fears, for to give voice to something is to give it power, but among many like me, I was robbed of the certainty of my future seven months ago. I can’t afford to be certain about anything anymore.
I hope there’s a future. If there’s not, maybe next time’s the charm.

I don’t believe in reincarnation. Some of my friends do. It’s better than gallow’s humor, I’ll tell you that.
Should I start? Just in case? I’ll think about it.
I just hope in the next life I won’t have to live through a war.
I hope, in the next life, I get to be here again.