Stop Watching War Like It’s a Show
Some of us lived the posts you’re scrolling past
Whenever there’s a war going on, the world turns on its screens — and suddenly, everyone has something to say.
The posts and photos I see of war today — whether in Ukraine or the Middle East — are all too familiar to me. In fact, they look exactly like the scenes that still live in my memory.
Except now, people scroll past rubble. They double-tap on blood. They pick the “team” they like best like it’s some kind of game. I see arguments in the comment sections. I see retweets, bumper stickers, meme reposts — all in the name of being more “informed” or morally superior.
Meanwhile, children are dying. Families are being destroyed. People are trying to survive with no food, no power, nowhere to sleep — nothing. And what I want to say to those who feel this is helping, who think they understand war, without sugarcoating or bullshitting, is this:
No one wins a war.
The people who suffer the most in war aren’t the politicians and “advocates” you see on media, and it often isn’t even the ones holding the weapons. The truth is, everyone loses in war, but it’s civilians that lose everything. It is the mothers holding onto their children in the basement, the children burying their own siblings and friends. Those are the people that have no voice in a war.
I would know. I was one of them.
Photo by Matieu Pons on Unsplash
Here’s the truth:
Posting another angry story doesn’t stop the bombs.
Screaming at your neighbor or arguing on social media doesn’t feed a starving child.
Cheering for a “side” while corpses line the streets doesn’t make you righteous or a better person in any way.
When I was a child, war wasn’t something I watched on a screen. It was something I survived. It lived in my body.
It meant the ground shook 300 times a day.
It meant screams echoing through the neighborhood.
It meant cold, dark basements and the constant fear that we wouldn’t live to see another day.
There was no “other side.” There was only survival.
War changed everything from the moment I could walk, before I even had a name for it.
Since then, I’ve grieved thousands of versions of my parents, my brother, myself. We survived, but none of us were the same after.
We put on brave faces, we smiled through it, we drank our coffee and tried to pretend we were okay.
But war doesn’t end when the bombs stop.
It stays in the body.
It lingers in the nervous system – showing up in the hyper-vigilance, in the insomnia, in the way our body still flinches at the slightest noise.
Unless you actively try to heal it, that trauma gets passed down. To your children. And their children. Until someone finally decides to break the cycle.
In my case, in many ways, I believe that someone was me. Not because I was brave or “special” in some way, but because I didn’t have any other choice.
My body was (and at times, still continues to) scream too loudly to ignore it.
So when I see people reposting memes and screaming about sides, when I see people cheering for violence in any form, no matter what “side” it’s for, I want to shake them.
Because unless you’ve lived it, you have no idea what it costs to survive war.
You have no idea how much it hurts to watch people reduce your entire childhood to a political point.
This isn’t a show.
This isn’t a meme.
This isn’t a debate topic.
It’s someone’s life. It’s someone’s body, mind, and soul absorbing unspeakable things they may never be able to recover from.
I can’t speak for every survivor of war, but I can speak for myself. Even that feels like a tiny, fractured piece of something much, much bigger — a wound too heavy for one person to hold.
But still, I decided to speak more about it. Because being silent and suppressing it nearly killed me.
And maybe, if enough of us speak more about it, and give voice to the often unspeakable things that have been buried for so long, the world will stop watching war like some kind of entertainment.
You don’t have to have lived through war to care about it. I just hope you remember that these headlines you scroll past are not just the latest “news” or political stunt. They’re someone’s childhood, someone’s grief, someone’s body, mind, and soul being altered forever.
And this isn’t just about war. It’s about what happens to us when we stop feeling. When we treat suffering and human lives like content. When we forget that these stories are real people – real human beings, just like any of us.
It’s about remembering to get back to our humanity … because that’s the only thing that can save us.
