I am sharing this on behalf of my husband. These are his words, his memories, and his story of survival.
It was an ordinary dayā¦ or so I thought.
On August 30, 2025, I returned home after a long day of work, dragging the weight of the hours behind me like a shadow. The afternoon had begun to fade, and the sun was casting its golden threads across the walls that held the details of my life. I entered my home, greeted by the smell of foodāthe scent of safety, the scent of a life I once believed would never change.
I ate my lunch quietly, as if rewarding myself after a tiring day. My wife and children had already left to visit my fatherās house, and we had agreed that I would join them after getting some rest. There was nothing unusual about itā¦ just a day like thousands that had passed before.
I lay down for a whileā¦ closed my eyesā¦ not knowing that this moment would become the line dividing two lives.
A sound unlike anything I had ever heard. It wasnāt just an explosionā¦ it felt as if the sky itself had shattered and fallen on top of me. In an instant, calm turned into hell, and the walls that once protected me became rubble collapsing over me.
I didnāt understand what had happened.
All I felt was a crushing weight on my chest, dust filling my lungs, and a strange silence after the chaosā¦ a terrifying silence, as if it were the end of everything. I tried to moveā¦ to screamā¦ to understandā¦ but my body was no longer mine.
I was beneath the rubbleā¦ between life and death.
Seconds felt like eternity. Faces disappeared, sounds blurredā¦ until everything began to fade away.
Not in my homeā¦ not between my wallsā¦ but on a white hospital bed, surrounded by exhausted faces, the sounds of pain, and the smell of a place that knows suffering too well. Thatās when I realized I had survivedā¦ but what kind of survival was this?
I asked about my homeā¦ no one answered directly.
I asked about my lifeā¦ and I understood the answer from their eyes before their words.
My homeā¦ was no longer a home.
My workā¦ no longer existed.
And my lifeā¦ was no longer the same.
In a single moment, everything had been turned upside down.
I was no longer the person who returned home in the afternoon to rest for a while and then join his family. I had become someone elseā¦ someone who carries within him the memory of an ordinary day that turned into an unforgettable story, and a wound that cannot be seen, yet never heals.
But despite all thisā¦ I am still breathing.
And deep inside me, there is something smallā¦ telling me that life, despite everything, is not over yet.
romaincrisis
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon
