A window showing bomb-damaged buildings and a window in which the blown-out glass has been replaced with tape. Weam Abu Daqqa describes it as “a window of hope.” Photo: Afnan Awad

Before the bombs began, I’d wake up excited for the day, while my siblings grumbled about having to go to school. I’d make myself coffee, my favorite ritual, and listen to my mother praying for me before I left for work. My father would ask if I wanted a ride, his gentle voice always accompanied by a smile. 

Between those ordinary mornings and the life I live now, something broke inside me. At first, I thought it was just a passing storm, that the rhythm of our days would slowly find its way back. But the silence that followed was not peaceful—it was hollow; even the air felt heavier, as if it too was holding its breath. I started to understand that safety is not just walls and routines, but a feeling. Once that feeling cracks, everything familiar begins to feel fragile. 

I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of explosions. My eyes fly open, my heart pounds violently, and my breath turns shallow. It takes long seconds to realize there is no bombing, no fire — the sound exists only in my mind. Still, fear grips my body before logic arrives. It stiffens, trembles, and prepares for impact.

Sometimes the trigger is a door slamming, sometimes a car passing too fast, and sometimes nothing at all. Even silence has become dangerous. It carries the same unnatural stillness that once came before an airstrike. I wake up scanning the room, seeing my family breathing steadily, their faces calm. But inside my mind there is noise: loud, relentless noise. I cannot speak. I cannot explain it. There are no words that feel accurate enough. Instead, I try to comfort myself, telling myself that this is just a phase, that it will pass. Yet beneath that hope lives another fear: the fear of losing myself, of never learning how to sleep without expecting disaster. 

I’m a woman from Gaza. I survived the bombardment, but I didn’t escape its impact. The bombs did not kill me, but they reshaped my relationship with safety, with sleep, with everyday life. I have learned to doubt quiet moments, to fear ordinary sounds, and to wonder whether this constant state of alert will ever loosen its grip on me. 

What remains is a heaviness deep in my body, which reveals itself in moments no one sees: in broken sleep and a heart that refuses to slow even in quiet rooms.

Psychological trauma does not appear in photographs, yet it governs my life, reshaping my sense of safety. Here in Gaza, survival does not equal healing. Silence does not mean peace. And what looks like an ending from the outside is just the beginning of a life filled with fear. 

I don’t know if I will ever fully heal. I don’t know if complete recovery is possible after living through such sustained violence. What I do know is that I am not alone. More than 2 million people in Gaza are living with the same invisible weight. We continue our lives, we laugh when we can. But beneath the surface our bodies remain tense, ready, waiting. 

I hear people speak about “after the war.” But what does “after” mean when the war still lives inside us? How can a war be over when our bodies remain trapped in survival mode, alert to danger, and unable to rest? When the bombs live on inside our bodies, inside our minds, and inside our fractured sleep?