I Didn’t Survive to Be Silent

I didn't claw my way out of morphine-soaked comas and sterile white rooms where machines beeped louder than voices just to smile politely and shrink myself into something people could swallow without choking.

I didn't drag this stitched-up body through nightmares and nosy prayers just to smooth my edges.

I didn't survive to be palatable.

I survived to tell you what it feels like when your birthplace gets erased from the map, when borders are redrawn with blood and bureaucracy, and your name, once whispered over lullabies and birthday cakes, becomes something people hesitate to pronounce, as if it might explode in their mouths.

They discharged me from the hospital under a sun that didn't feel like mine anymore, its warmth diluted, suspicious. I was fourteen. A skeleton in an oversized hoodie. Skin like wax paper. Scars that pulsed when I breathed too deeply. Confusion sat on my chest like a second heart.

No one met us at the gate. No flags. There were no poignant reunions. Just a cracked sidewalk, a taxi driver who looked at us like we might bleed on his seats, and a sky that had forgotten how to be blue.

Our apartment still stood, but it felt haunted - each room holding its breath. The wallpaper peeled like old bandages. The fridge buzzed with an emptiness that screamed louder than any siren. There was half a loaf of bread, stale and bruised, and water that smelled faintly like rust and regret. My mother didn't speak. My father didn't sit. They just hovered - flickering in and out of focus like ghosts with unfinished business.

The neighbors didn't say hello. They closed their shutters a little faster. Crossed the street a little earlier. They knew who I was. What I was. The girl had returned home. The girl who shouldn't have.

And the silence - God, the silence - wasn't peace. It was punishment.

The city wasn't home anymore. It was a puzzle with missing corners. People I knew were no longer there. Some are dead. Some vanished like morning fog. Some just stopped looking me in the eye.

I didn't understand politics. I still don't. What I understood was this:

My parents started speaking less. They moved like ghosts inside the house. My mother crossed herself differently than the neighbors. My father stopped answering the phone.

I was now "that girl." I became known as the sick one. The one who lived. The one who shouldn't have. Too Catholic for the Orthodox side. Too Orthodox for the Catholic side. Too alive to be mourned. Too broken to be celebrated.

The whispers followed me like stray dogs. I felt them scratching at my ankles in the hallway at school, in the market, and in the church I wasn't sure I belonged to.

They called me "foreign" in my own language.

They asked why my last name didn't match my mother's.

They asked why I walked with a limp, why I looked worn out, and why I didn't sing the anthem loud enough.

Have you ever been shamed for breathing?

That's what it felt like. Existing, for me, was already a protest. I tried to be quiet. I really did. I tried blending in. I ironed my clothes, brushed my hair, and memorized prayers in both languages. I even pretended not to hear the jokes. About my father, about my mother, about people who "shouldn't mix blood."

One day at school, the teacher asked us to draw our family tree. I stared at the paper until the bell rang. I didn't draw anything. I couldn't decide if the roots were poisoned or sacred.

We left soon after that. We packed what little we had, mainly the pain and papers. I think my mother left a part of herself in that kitchen, still boiling water that never turned to soup. My father was devastated. He didn't cry, but he started blinking more than usual. We crossed a border that didn't feel like freedom. It felt like exile. Like being erased, quietly.

They called us refugees. I didn't know what that meant at the time, except that it made everyone flinch when we said it. In the camp, I learned new words for "shame." I learned to wait. For bread. For documents. For silence to stop meaning danger. I realized that pity and compassion are distinct. Pity has rules. Pitty checks your passport.

There was a girl in the camp who wore lipstick every day. She told me, "Don't let them see you sad. They love that shit."

We made fun of the guards. We told stories about the food until it tasted better. We laughed with our mouths full of dust. One night, I couldn't sleep. My scar was throbbing again.

I walked outside the tent and looked at the sky. It was so fucking quiet. No bombs. No sirens. No voices asking who you prayed to.

Just a sky.

And that's when I decided:

If I survived the surgeries, the war, the exile, and the silence, then silence would never survive me.

When we finally got our papers and were sent to a new country, I didn't know how to be anything but loud. I laughed too hard. Cursed too much. I wore red even when everyone else wore beige. I wasn't trying to be brave. I was trying not to disappear again.

They put me in school with other kids who spoke English better than I did. They looked at me as if I were stupid. They called me "weird." They made fun of my accent, my clothes, and my silence when I didn't know the word. So, I started writing. At first, it was nonsense. Little pieces of memory. Shadows. Then it became rhythm. Then it became rage. Then it became true.

One day, a teacher read one of my stories out loud. She said, "This is powerful. This is real."

And I sat there, pretending to be unaffected. But inside, something opened. Something screamed, "I AM STILL HERE."

They don't know how many times I've folded shame into my chest like origami. How many times I wanted to bite my tongue off just to stop explaining where I'm from. They don't know the names I've been called. The labels taped to my back.

"War baby."

"Half-blood."

"Too foreign."

"Too broken."

"Too much."

But I do.

And I wear every single one like armor. Because I didn't survive to be silent. I survived to remember. To witness. To write stories that bleed and scream and refuse to fit in tidy little boxes.

I survived to say, "There's a girl out there who thinks she's alone, who thinks she's broken, who believes her pain doesn't fit anywhere."

To her, I say:

You don't need to fit. You need to roar. You need to take up space like your survival demands it. You need to write. You need to scream. You need to live so loudly that they can't help but remember you. Because you were not made to be small. You were made to survive.

And then - to set the damn world on fire.