My fingers trace the smooth skin of my arms, unmarred and whole, as I stand before the mirror each morning. It's a ritual that should bring comfort, but instead, it fills me with a paradoxical ache. In a land where so many young bodies have been broken, my wholeness feels like an unearned privilege.
It's the wounded soldiers that get to me the most. Innocent 19-year-olds who just finished school, who haven't even started university. They should be debating career paths and planning gap year travels. Instead, they'll carry their forever altered bodies for the next 80 years, a constant reminder of sacrifices made far too soon.
Sometimes, I forget. I forget that for me to live here, peacefully, in Bet Shemesh, there is a price to pay– there is a price that others have paid and keep paying.
Life goes on, after all. I find myself absorbed in the mundane rhythms of daily life - working, taking my 3-year-old to the park, grocery shopping, prepping for Shabbat. In these moments, the weight lifts, and I'm just another Israeli parent, another mom, another shopper.
But then reality intrudes. At the park, I see a young man, barely out of his teens, struggling to play catch with his friends using a prosthetic arm. In the grocery store, a soldier in her early twenties navigates the aisles in a wheelchair, her eyes holding a weariness beyond her years. They stand out in a world made for the able-bodied, these young heroes who until recently were just like any other teenager.
The streets of Jerusalem echo with a dissonant symphony – the laughter of children in parks mingles with the rhythmic tapping of crutches on sidewalks. Each sound a reminder of the divergent paths our lives have taken since that fateful October day.
I find myself averting my eyes from the young soldier at the bus stop, his empty sleeve pinned neatly to his shoulder. What right do I have to meet his gaze when my own arms swing freely at my sides? The guilt sits heavy in my chest, a constant companion as I navigate a world that now seems divided into 'before' and 'after'.
At night, I dream of university campuses filled with these wounded young soldiers, trying to balance textbooks on laps that no longer feel, or typing essays with hands that aren't there, the weight of their stolen youth pressing down on me.
It's misplaced guilt, I know, but also, it's survivor's guilt. How can my daily life – my job, my relationships, my mundane worries – hold any weight against the monumental losses these young people have endured?
There's a new language I'm learning, one of hesitation and unspoken questions. In cafes and markets, I find myself searching young faces for signs of trauma, wondering at the stories behind each scar, each limp, each haunted look. The easy camaraderie that once defined Israeli society now feels strained, fractured by experiences I can't begin to imagine (and in all honesty, I don't even want to).
They say time heals all wounds, but we know that's not true– not really… Some wounds reshape a nation and its youth.
There are lots of us out there, whose bodies may be unmarked, but whose souls bears the invisible scars of a country forever changed, of a generation forever altered. And pretending you don't see doesn't make their wounds disappear.
Until peace becomes more than just a dream, I'll carry this weight of wholeness – a reminder of the cost of survival and the debt we owe to those who've paid it in flesh and bone, in years of youth and dreams deferred.
