The day when you came home...

The night had swallowed the day placing a dark carpet over the streets with blips of dim lights protruding through the covering. Darkness and gloom set the mood for what was about to come.  The stars seemed farther than they actually were and those glittering decorations did not bring usual joy of searching for the occasional falling stars.  Tonight was different as it could be; prescient, filled with fear predicting what was about to realize.
A door bell echoed piercing sounds as the door became ajar.  Silhouettes of three men appeared.  At first, they were unrecognizable but at a closer look I saw my father and uncle leaning on both sides of some unknown individual while on the unsupported sides the crutches erected them.  The chattering of teeth and indescribable fear struck us all.  I could not move, only the movement of my teeth prevailed, uncontrollably.  Their smiles did not seem too comforting as they stumbled into the flat, into our kitchen.  My stoic mother took it well, composed and realistic.  My grandmother on the other hand saw both of her sons wounded by the evils of war; crushed she wept for a long time.  Then the ambulance came to help them with the bleeding wounds.  Children hopped around the new sighting and jumped around the van eagerly wanting to know what had occurred.  I could not talk, I failed to produce any vocals.  The only thing I could concentrate on is the chattering of my teeth that did not seem to subside.  The moment came when I felt helpless, useless.  I saw things happening around me but I could not participate, only watch and wait.  I was struck by what I saw.  I wanted to cry or scream or hug my dad but I became motionless and immobile.  Both him and my uncle were reassuring us that they were okay, but the blood did not seem to stop dripping on our carpet.

They were lucky, they claimed.  Only few months earlier they were drafted to participate in the conflict, unwillingly.  They agreed to go because they knew sooner or later the soldiers will find them and forcefully take them to serve in the army.  The problem was we were in war; the most senseless, atrocious war that no one really wanted; or at least we thought so.  At first, they were stationed in some remote village to guard it while inhabiting some half destroyed house, hoping that the call to fight would never come.  There were others from our city, true Yugoslavs, decent human beings only wanted for it all to seize so they can return to normalcy.  But what is normalcy after surviving a war???  

On the day they were wounded, the regiment was sent to a nearby town to engage in a fight.  The full on combat over the trenches facing each other, the bombs and constant sound of guns and cannons resonated.  And then there was another sound, more closer, more resolute followed by the explosion shattering shrapnel in the trench where my father and uncle were located.  Unable to move, laying there filled with fear they were struck on the first day of the combat.  What a luck!!  They never had to use their own guns, they remained pure and clean, they remained human.  All they wanted was a normal life they led before.  

After, they were taken to a hospital were they spent a couple of days.  They were given clothes of dead soldiers in which they appeared on our door step.  Wounded and hurt they came home, but at least they came back alive.  This was a blessing in disguise.  Never again they were to bear arms, never again they were to be sent to the trenches of death.  They lived, they survived and in that moment my dad decided that it was time to leave it all behind.  We lost our country, we lost our humanity, we lost our city, we simply lost...But I will never forget that day, when my dad came home!

Fear

I have a story to tell.  A tale of my experiences and a singular event that ultimately determined the course of my country's existence and my own life.  Currently, I belong to a diaspora displaced to a far country where assimilation is still ongoing.  Once one leaves a nest, there is a never ending quest for urgent belonging that never really actualizes.  The consequences linger like an incurable virus, never really leaving and only subtly becoming dormant.  But then the periodic outbreaks occur, serving as a constant reminder of what had taken place somewhere in the past abruptly creeping to the surface in its full force.  The thunderbolt of realization strikes unpredictably and old questions surface with the same resolute power as before.  The defining events of past rise between the cracks of time producing ongoing quests of contemplation and constant reflections.  Memories become vivid and omnipresent leaving no room for present.  Such reminder shows the limitations of choices and the power of random occurrences that shape and control the existence.  This limbo determines periods of melancholic state resolutely taking over every essence of being.  That's when  I start writing; it becomes my muse.

Often I attempt to define myself not as a person, but as a product of the accumulation of events and circumstances that led me to this present moment.  The common denominator is fear which was installed in me very early on in my childhood years continuously following me indiscriminately and tenaciously without ever really subsiding.  Fear is my enemy and my friend; it is a determining authority that explains my driving and breaking force, subconsciously placed and triggered at any given instance.  Every time I attempt to find a way to overcome it and go against my nature of cautiousness, something crushes me down to the abyss of failed tries.  Hence, I stopped fighting against it and became  immobile and stagnant.  The crippling fear has won the battle and pushed me on the sidelines of my own life.  I simply exist without any real fulfillment, without any motivation, desolate in my own mind of never ending attempts at battles that result in failures.

And the root of all the problems stems out of a singular event that determined the course of my existence: the War.  Early on, I learnt how to be afraid; a feeling that has never left me, a sentiment that defines me.  I may look and act as everyone else but that is only a shell, a bunker, a trench.  Beneath it all, the chaotic explosions burst from time to time, leaving confusion and incapability behind.  After the booms the void emerges and the vast emptiness endures for long periods of time disabling any movement towards progress and change.  So, I frequently run from the world around me, from the daily routine, from conforming, from me and I look for consolations elsewhere in the world of temporary escapes that happen more than they ought to.  Those are not excuses or explanations for why am I the way I am but debilitating states of mind I find myself in driven by nothing else but fear.  And the only way to conquer it is to erase the formative years of my life; to completely change the core one needs to die and I am not willing to do that.  Learning how to live with fear and concern is far more plausible than the option of seizing to exist.  Yet, it is a more difficult path taken that will leave me on the sidelines of my own life.