Wisdom And Fear of Death

Just Another Life — The barn owlet

Meliha Avdic
7 min readApr 14, 2022

--

Photo by Marek Levák on Unsplash

The years of distance have changed the way I see my past. I can remember being scared; being young, alone, responsible for my little girl, angry, and rejected by my society. I recall the panic attacks, the prayers, the hopes, the sleepless nights, but it’s like watching a movie or seeing someone else go through it. They say ‘time heals all’, it’s not so much that it heals as it makes us a stranger to ourselves. We become our own audience wondering how and why is that person going through so much pain, and then we realize that we are the person. Call it evolution, some kind of inevitable change, call it growth, or call it time, the fact is, everything really does pass. Well, not everything. The mind has a strange way of retaining the good memories while it lets the bad ones fade away as if they were a lie or a dream. I wish I knew this when I was young.

Life in the city became unbearable from the moment Harris, my husband and the father of my child, was arrested for war crimes. No one cared if he was guilty or innocent. No one cared that I didn’t even know him until after the war. I went from being the best and most loved teacher to persona non grata overnight. But I would have endured it all forever, waiting for him to return if I thought there was any chance he would return. After the message, it was all lost.

--

--

Meliha Avdic

Born in Bosnia, grew up in the UK-another war child, yes. Passionate about people and the state of society. A bit of a maverick, apparently. www.meliha.uk