Have you ever been at a home that doesn’t feel like home? Have you ever suffered from a state of not belonging to anywhere? Have you ever lived in a conflict between choosing to live a safe peaceful life and choosing to suffer willingly? Have you ever experienced the fact that you are reminiscing something that only exists within your imagination and wishful thoughts?
That is exactly how we feel; this is specifically how we live. You didn’t guess who we are, yet?
We, as the world has described us, are the happiest depressed people you could ever meet.
We grew up on heroic war stories, on sectarian divisions, on thoughts that anyone who does not belong to our community is Evil. As we dug into life more, developed more logical thoughts and grew up a bit older, we realized that what is so called “sectarian division” was nothing but a political scheme to keep the public owned by superior forces. War stories were not heroic at all, but in fact they were stories based on antagonism from the elderly passing them to us youth, hoping that we’d adopt their “full of hatred” legacy.
If you take a glimpse at our country, you’d envy us for the beauty that nature has blessed us with; you’ll have the time of your life when you hang out with the most full-of-life kind of people, we obviously know how to live and make the best out of our lives. If you taste our cuisine, you’d be addicted to the exquisite flavors that are always cooked with love and passion. Passion! Let’s talk about passion when it comes to the way we express ourselves, the way we party and dance as if there’s no tomorrow, the way we love hard, and the way we grieve harder, every single way of ours is filled with passion.
But, if you take a deeper look into our lives, you’ll realize that our basic realities are far from the sugar coated stories that the world has narrated. We actually live in a daily struggle trying to make it throughout the day without getting killed, we live in a constant conflict between choosing to stay in our homelands despite the lack of job opportunities, the broken dreams, despite the fact that our “what so called politicians” are experts in theft, corruption, and murder. Despite the fact that our economic system has reached its rock-bottom, or the fact that our government has conspired on us all and destroyed our beautiful Beirut, murdered us, collapsed our city, raped our memories, and shattered our future. We live in a daily struggle between choosing to stay in a country where its people are separated by sectarianism, where we see that our youths are getting brain-washed by the fairytale stories recounted by their superior dictators, where we see that our people are always ready to die for their political beliefs and imaginary causes, but when it comes to their country’s interest, not only do they disappear, but also they fight those who stand speaking in the name of the country.
You see, these thoughts cross our minds every time we open our eyes or go to sleep, they cross our minds every time we say goodbye to our family members, best friends, and loved ones at the airport alleys, they also cross our minds whenever we have an electrical blackout, or whenever we get played by a corrupted merchant, or by having to pay triple the price of any commodity. But sometimes, these thoughts do not just cross our minds, sometimes they just live with us, these thoughts become habits every time we bury someone we love, someone we cherished, someone young, someone that had a bright future, someone that was supposed to return back home, someone that had a family, someone that could have been any of us!
So, if you ever wonder what exactly our constant conflict is, I’d tell you that we live in a non-stop inner struggle between choosing to try and remain alive in our beloved Lebanon, or to actually just leave and live.
