Between Laughter and Grief

For most of my life, laughter has been my armour. Joking, smiling, finding something absurd in the middle of a crisis; it’s how I learned to survive. People often assume I’m always happy, and comment how beautiful my smile is, and how radiant my energy can be. Even the pharmacist looks surprised when I pick up my depression medication.

It turns out there’s a name for this: functional CPTSD. The ability to keep going, even thriving on the surface, while carrying invisible wounds.

When people used to ask how I stayed positive in a crisis, I had a ready answer:

“If I get sad, my brain stops working. So I have to stay positive to find a solution.”

That trick worked for years. Until now.

When Humor Stops Working

Since the genocide began, my capacity to make fun of things is disappearing. The heaviness inside me has no release valve anymore.

I feel sad…sad in a way I’ve never known. Sad at a depth that leaves me gasping. The helplessness kills me, even though I know, logically, the boundaries between what I can and cannot control.

Something in me still asks: Why is the Earth still spinning? How can it not stop in the face of this? How can humanity watch this unfold, live, again and again?

Grief That Splinters the Self

When my therapist asked how I feel when relatives in Gaza beg for help and I can’t give it, the words that came out were:

“I wish I could break into a million pieces, shatter like glass, and return to the land. To be part of it again, like I never existed.”

That’s how heavy my heart feels. I try to lift it, but the weight does not go away. They call it grief.

Or maybe exhaustion…exhaustion with being human. Exhaustion from watching other humans play God with people’s lives, like a video game.

Living in Contradictions

And yet, there’s another layer.

Like many others, I sense the current system is collapsing. I see signs of a new one emerging, one that looks more human, more value-based. I want to be part of building it.

At the same time, another part of me longs only for rest, for vanishing, for becoming a ghost, for not existing at all.

I carry sadness, exhaustion, fear, and hope all at the same time. They don’t fight each other so much as they press against each other, like waves colliding in the same sea.

So, How Am I Doing?

I am sad.

I am exhausted.

I am scared.

I am hopeful.

I am fine and not fine

and somehow, I am everything in between.

All of these truths sit inside me at the same time. None of them are permanent, but all of them are real.