You are what rises after everything has passed. It’s there, in that suspended instant, when the truth shows itself with brutal clarity, without embellishment. It’s not during the storm, nor when everything hurts, nor when you’re asking yourself if you can make it. The truth appears afterward, when the echo of pain fades and you’re left alone, stripped of excuses.
People always say I’m strong. I don’t know if I am. What I know is that I never had another choice. Life pushed me into operating rooms like someone pushing open a door without looking back. I had to go in, I had to endure, I had to keep going. And when there’s no choice, there’s no heroism. There’s only instinct.
Over the years I’ve understood that life gives you only two paths: you go on… or you go on. There’s nothing else. Surrender is a pretty word for those who still have the luxury of choosing. I didn’t.
If I could give one piece of advice today, I’d say the most important thing is not how you walk through the storm, but how you come out afterward. Because in the end, when the war is over, when the rubble cools and the smoke clears, the only thing left is you. You and your will. You and your hope. You and that collection of scars nobody asked you to have, but that now define you.
In the end, you are what survives: the weight of experience, the distrust that protects you, and that resilience that lifts you when there’s no strength left, but you get up anyway. Because that’s what it means to live.