Dear stranger,
My name is Hope and I'm 9.
It's a long time since I have been this age. I've been nine since I fleed from home.
One day, I packed all my books in a bag, and at night I walked out of my family's apartment without turning back.
I had hoped my parents would come looking for me, but they never had before. Or maybe they had, but they couldn't find me under all the rubble.
When I left home, I got into this city, which was swarming with life.
In every street, there were so many children like me who had fleed the pain, anger, loneliness, and violence they had experienced from such an early age. It burst with children's laughs, music, playing, and colors.
It was then that the earth started shivering, and time began eroding piece after piece our paradise shelter until just shards of the previous Beauty were left.
The children like me who inhabited it gradually turned into shadows, one after the other.
The laughs and music that at first filled the streets slowly turned off.
All went silent and still, one day, with the colors fading away.
I was afraid we would never recover from such a loss.
But I was wrong.
Finally, something new is growing. Some seeds of hope mixed with the debris have taken roots, and red poppies are flowering, brightening up the black sky.
-
That's a glimpse at my psyche. With this collage, I aimed to shape the turmoil that was going on inside of me at the time.
When you suffer violence, you lose a part of yourself. She escapes from yourself, taking shelter in some hidden place in your unconscious. It's a survival strategy your mind activates to protect you from the trauma. And within some time, you start to forget ever having her. And yet, inside yourself, this abandoned city exists inhabited by all these child versions of yourself, who are stuck in it. The time goes on but the children remain. They never grow up, since none can ever grow out of trauma. You're only option is to listen to them, to acknowledge their existence, so they don't fade away as silenced shadows under the rubble of your mind. For hope to grow amid the ruins of a bombed city, the seeds of awareness have to be planted and they need the right time and place to take roots.
