The Girl Who Never Wanted a War

Dear Me,

You were never supposed to carry these wounds.

You were twenty still learning how to breathe without losing rhythm, learning how to trust without questioning intentions. You were soft laughter and quiet courage. You were unfinished dreams and gentle hope. You were not meant for trenches and trauma, for the deafening noise of fear, for the unbearable sight of life slipping away right beside you.

But they put you there anyway.

They took the softness you guarded fiercely and replaced it with cold steel. They put a weapon in hands meant for holding flowers, for touching love letters, for writing poetry. They told you to fight when you barely knew how to heal. You remember those first days vividly learning to numb yourself to chaos, breathing in gunpowder and pain instead of air, watching friends become memories in seconds, faces you laughed with reduced to silence on blood-soaked screens.

You remember exactly how your heart broke that night you were hit. The moment you felt it pierce your body, that cold, ruthless bullet tearing your flesh, carving itself into a memory you could never erase. You remember vividly, the smell your own blood mingled with sweat and dirt, the metallic taste on your tongue. You saw them stitching you, pulling the bullet out while your mind hovered somewhere between waking nightmares and cruel consciousness, wishing desperately to slip away, yet holding stubbornly onto life because you promised yourself you’d return home someday.

Three days without sleep, three days without food every second an eternity of exhaustion, nausea, and dread. You closed your eyes, hoping to find escape, but all you saw were explosions and faces you couldn’t save. And then pain worse than physical: your best friend’s trembling voice, cracking through a phone line, each desperate word a dagger through your heart. Hearing them break, hearing their panic unravel you more than any bullet ever could. You wanted nothing more than to assure them everything was okay but you weren’t sure of anything anymore, especially not okay.

You never told them how much it hurt. How deeply guilt etched itself into your bones because someone cared enough to be afraid for you. You hated becoming someone’s worry, someone’s fragile prayer whispered into the night. You never asked to become the reason someone else cried.

You are haunted now by memories the eyes of those who fell, the screams of the wounded, the silent chaos afterward. You see ghosts in your mirror, traces of innocence lost forever. You carry scars hidden beneath clothes, beneath skin, beneath smiles. The war didn’t end the day you left it burrowed into your chest, settled into your lungs, nested in your silence.

Sometimes people thank you for your bravery. They call you strong. You nod politely, but you want to scream that strength wasn’t your choice it was survival, forced upon you violently. You didn’t want medals or admiration. You wanted your youth back, your peace back, your gentle heart unscarred and whole.

And today, when you hear laughter or music or silence, you still remember vividly the sound of explosions, the fear of loss, the desperate whisper of someone begging you to come home safely.

You were never meant to fight in someone else’s war. You were never meant to bleed on foreign soil or carry guilt heavier than the weapons they forced you to hold. But you did.

So hold yourself gently tonight.

Forgive yourself for surviving.

Forgive yourself for carrying wounds no one else sees.

Because you were never meant for war,

but you survived it anyway.

And perhaps, someday,

you’ll finally allow yourself to come home.