Many of us have been through some traumatic events in our lives. To others, we seem like any ordinary person, but to the survivors of the trauma, we are part of a tribe. I am sharing a story of a little kid who has been through the traumatic event of APS attack (16/12/2014) and survived.
Before the unfortunate event of APS attack, that kid was a mischievous little thing, a bundle of energy. I would call him, little demon. But now he seems like fighting with his own demons. He doesn’t laugh as he used to in the past. His eyes are always sad. He speaks very little these days. I know the kid personally so that is why I also know that even after all these years, he still wakes up soaked in sweat in the middle of the night.
A soldier that survives the war goes through the same kind of experience but at least, he is an adult. To think that a 14-year-old kid watched as his friends were brutally murdered by terrorists make me wonder, where did we go wrong?
One day while attending an event, I was standing in the corner, far away from the crowd when the kid approached me. He stood at my side for a long while, neither of us breaking the silence nor shattering the serenity of the moment.
“Does it ever go away?” He asked.
I was confused as to what he was talking about. I turned toward him with questionable eyes and he answered my unspoken query by saying, “The guilt”
“What are you feeling guilty about?” I asked.
We never talked about what happened that day. I was giving him his space. He never broached the subject before but that day everything changed. He told me that he had lost his glasses and was looking for them on all fours amidst the commotion of that attack. One of his friends put his glasses in his hands and shoved him in the direction of the exit. Precisely at that moment, a bullet pierced his friend and his friend died on the spot.
“My friend would have been alive today had he not helped me,” He said.
He was feeling responsible for the death of his friend. I had no words to take away the pain in the kid’s eyes.
It’s difficult for me to accept the fact that, someone as young as that kid is suffering so much. Why does life treat us so harshly sometimes? A mother loves her children beyond words but then why is it called mother-nature? Am I to assume that some of us are not the favorite child?