«آن‌کس که پس از قتل‌عام زنده می‌ماند، به جسم زنده است نه به جان.»
-سوزان سانتاگ

What you’re carrying right now… I can’t pretend to fully understand it. I haven’t lived what you’ve lived. But I can feel, even through a screen, that the weight you’re describing isn’t something words can lift. It’s something that sits in your chest, in your bones, in the spaces between sleep and waking and no one should have to carry that alone.

Survivor’s guilt is one of the cruelest things the mind does to us; it makes us feel like being alive is a betrayal. But it’s not. You didn’t choose who lived and who didn’t. You’re not responsible for the randomness of tragedy. And the fact that you’re grieving them, that you can’t forget their voices, that you cry every night that proves you haven’t abandoned them. You’re still holding them. Maybe too tightly. You said you’re ashamed in front of your friends who didn’t come back.

But I think… if they could see you now, they wouldn’t want you to carry shame. They would want you to rest. To breathe. To let yourself be alive without punishing yourself for it.

if the only thing you can do today is survive it, that’s enough.