Yesterday, someone asked me how it felt to recall childhood memories of Lebanon. Without hesitation, I answered with two words: 'warmth and melancholy'. But the question didn’t leave me. It followed me throughout the day, unraveling layers I had not fully acknowledged. The truth is, my relationship with my first home is not just tinged with nostalgia—it is an ever-shifting storm of passion and despair. There is the beauty of what once was, and then there is the pain of why I left and why I have never truly returned. Lebanon, in all its contrasts, shaped me in ways I am still learning to understand. The memories are not just light-filled moments of jasmine-scented summers; they are also weighted by the shadows of history, by personal and collective grief, by the realities of war, loss, and the aching need to belong.
Writing these daily reflections is not just an exercise in documenting my thoughts—it is a form of healing. Each word is an excavation, pulling up pieces of the past that have long been buried under layers of time and distance. I am learning to look at these memories without being consumed by them, to hold them up to the light without allowing them to drown me in emotion. To write is to air out the rooms of my past, to open the windows of my suppressed memories and let the fresh winds of the future in. It is a process of unearthing, of making peace with the contradictions that have defined my journey, of embracing the rawness of human experience with open arms.
And so, I write—not because it is easy, but because it is necessary. These words, these thoughts, these fragments of memory—they are my way of reconciling the past with the present, of finding meaning in both the beauty and the sorrow. I cannot stop writing, just as I cannot stop searching for home, wherever that may be. The act of writing itself becomes home—a place where I can exist freely, where I can lay the weight of memory down and breathe.