October 7th.
A date that will be with me all my life.
I decided to try to get down in writing what I am going through; maybe that will help.
The amount of support is simply amazing, but somehow it doesn’t help. I can’t get rid of my distress, which I just can’t explain.
Everyone asks how I am, and it is always the same answer, “I am ok, I am alive.” Those words “I am alive” have been echoing in my head from the moment I realized that I got out of there, as soon as we got back to my apartment in Givataim.
We cried, and we hugged really tightly. I am alive. I survived it.
The details of how I survived don’t really matter, because it was all a matter of luck, a lot of luck, a huge miracle. Every escape route we chose turned out to be lucky, a great miracle.
When did we realize how many miracles happened there? Only when we got back home, and we sat for hours watching the news. And we saw everything suddenly from the side, in hindsight. Only then did we realize where we had been, from what we had been saved from.
"To see all the murdered people, those kidnapped - it just hit us that it could easily have been any one of us"
To see all the murdered people, those kidnapped - it just hit us that it could easily have been any one of us.
And what would have happened if we had stayed for another 15-20 minutes at the party, if we hadn’t gotten out of there quickly when there were groups of people, if we had abandoned our car like so many, if we hadn’t turned right instead of left like everyone else, if we hadn’t managed to pull the car out of the mud and if we hadn’t driven as fast as possible. It was the scariest thing in the world.
And to see all the murdered people, those kidnapped - it just hit us that it could easily have been any one of us. But it seems we had a guardian angel, a miracle worker, that made sure we made the right decisions in the field, that showed us where to escape to.
It took two hours, two hours that felt like forever, during which we didn’t know if we would survive, two hours where the only thing in my head was, “I want to live. This is not the time to die. I want to L-I-V-E.”
And here, in answer to your question, I am ok, I am alive.
I still can’t really grasp it and I know that it will take time to deal with this and heal. But my friends and I are alive. We survived it.
I don’t even know how to contain all this pain, the sadness and the anger that those animals murdered everyone, killed our soldiers, children, elderly without an ounce of humanity.
How, how is it possible?
It is inconceivable. How is it possible to take this all in? It isn’t possible.
I hurt with the biggest pain with those who didn’t manage to escape, with the murdered, with the kidnapped, with their friends and family.
So much pain and sadness.
It is simply not fair that it happened. Just not fair.
Why me and not them?
I am not really okay, but I am alive.
And now, now the only thing left is to heal.
Dor T.