Nostr notes by aseelsehwel

In the beginning, silence was my prison. I hid my brokenness as ...

2026-02-28T20:29:46Z

In the beginning, silence was my prison. I hid my brokenness as if it were a disgrace, thinking that seeking help meant surrendering to madness.

But the real “madness” was the quiet gnawing at my mind every night. My condition worsened, and escape became impossible, so I knocked on digital doors and began online therapy sessions, hoping the screen would act as a wall shielding me from the weight of reality.

But how do you heal a wound when you’re still bleeding on the battlefield?

I sat before the therapist, separated by distances and wires, yet my eyes betrayed me. They fled the camera to stare at the ruins outside. My room’s walls were entirely gone, leaving me exposed to the destruction.

I tried to talk about “recovery,” but my words faltered in my throat, stuck between what I felt and what I could say. How can I speak of healing while devastation stares at me from every corner of the neighborhood? I saw how everything had fallen and how I remained.

The survivor who doesn’t feel like a survivor.

In those moments, questions exploded in my mind like shells: How can I ever forget what my eyes have seen? The loss, the displacement, the chaos that unfolded…

I realized that my therapy couldn’t be complete while my surroundings still weighed on me with the echoes of the past. The session would end, but the scene did not. The therapist would close the camera, and I would remain alone, facing the bare truth: that I live in a house laid bare by war, inhabiting a body violated by trauma.

I do not ask for a perfect life, nor do I seek boundless happiness… I only want a life.

This is all I wish for: a very ordinary life, where I don’t wake up terrified by a sound that no one else hears.

I am Aseel, a writer from Gaza, living amid genocide and famine. Your support can help my family survive.
https://chuffed.org/project/138285-help-sehwel-family-with-their-medical-treatment

I live where the sound of silence is broken only by war. The ...

2025-11-01T23:04:35Z

I live where the sound of silence is broken only by war.

The world outside my window moves on without me—laughing, learning, loving, growing—in colors I cannot touch. Here, the streets are hollow bones. The schools, silent graves. Time itself lies shattered beneath dust and rubble.

I watch others from afar—chasing dreams I cannot reach, climbing ladders I cannot touch, celebrating victories that sound like whispers from another life. They wake without fear. They plan without hesitation. They move through a world that no longer belongs to me. And I… I measure my days by the tremor of explosions, by the moments when the sky feels ready to collapse.

War steals more than homes—it swallows the ordinary: quiet mornings, free laughter, hands meeting without trembling. I walk in my mind, I learn, I love—but always slipping away, always behind glass, always elsewhere.

Every time I look outside, the ordinary becomes alien. Freedom feels like a ghost. Life moves on without me—beautiful and cruel, a language I can see but never speak. Every heartbeat reminds me that the world I once knew is gone, and I wander only in its shadow.

Every morning, the wind circles my tent like a restless ghost, ...

2025-10-29T19:28:51Z

Every morning, the wind circles my tent like a restless ghost, tearing me from sleep.
It does not whisper comfort — it screams a harsh truth: I am still here.
Not by choice, but because the occupation drove us from our homes, turning them into rubble and leaving me with nothing but this cold tent for refuge.

My body is here, but my soul never left the place that once held my laughter, my silence, my peace.
I miss the warmth of my home — the sunlight spilling through familiar windows, and the small joys I once took for granted: quiet mornings, fleeting smiles, the fragile moments that made life whole.

Each gust of wind reminds me of what we lost, and each night the cold carves its way into my bones, as if searching for the warmth it once knew.
Yet even among the ruins of our lives, our will endures.

They took everything from us, yet our memories remain — fragments of life that still warm our hearts, and the stubborn hope we cling to until life returns once more.

I was walking down a street that had once been full of ...

2025-10-24T15:10:03Z

I was walking down a street that had once been full of life—shops open, children laughing, neighbors chatting. Now, it was a graveyard of rubble and dust. The air was thick with smoke, stinging my eyes and filling my lungs with the taste of fire and fear. Every step stirred memories of what this place had been, and the contrast was unbearable.

Then I saw them. Children. Some missing an arm, some missing a leg, some missing both, yet their small bodies moved through the debris with a courage that seemed almost impossible. Their eyes—wide, searching—asked questions no child should ever have to ask: Why me? Why here? Will anyone see me?

A boy sat on the curb, rolling a broken toy car over the cracks. His laugh was fragile, sharp, yet it was still laughter. Nearby, a girl balanced on a fallen beam, her small feet gripping the splintered wood as if sheer will could hold the world together. The wind whispered through the shattered buildings, carrying tiny sounds: a bird fluttering, a child’s laugh, a dog’s bark—reminders that life insists on persisting.

Amid all this destruction, a heavy weight pressed on my chest—anger, helplessness, and sorrow all at once. How could the world go on as if nothing had happened while the lives of these children were unraveling? Here, innocence had been stolen, replaced by nightmares, and screams had become the language of survival.

I sat beside a boy who tried to smile at me. I couldn’t return a real smile. Tears welled in my eyes as I realized words could never reach the horrors his soul had witnessed. All I could do was place my hand gently on his shoulder and whisper, “You are not alone.”

Nearby, a little girl sat on the edge of a shattered doorway, clutching a twisted piece of metal as if it were a toy. Our eyes met for a moment, and in her gaze, I saw an entire world of stories—a world torn apart before it even began.

And yet, even here, life refused to surrender completely. Hands reached for each other. Children shared scraps of food, comforted one another, whispered small jokes that were almost like songs. The smallest gestures of care emerged from the chaos, fragile sparks of humanity in a world determined to erase it.

I walked on, carrying their faces in my mind, their courage in my soul. Even if the world looked away, I promised myself I would not. Every life, even the smallest, every cry, even the quietest, mattered. Their stories demanded to be remembered. Their laughter, their tears, their survival—proof that even in the darkest ruins, life insists on being seen, felt, and honored.