Once upon a time, there was a 12-year-old girl. She thought she was like any other 12-year-old girl. She never knew anything but games, cartoons, homework, and strawberries in the garden. She enjoyed every day, especially riding her bicycle as fast as she could around the neighborhood. She was a zestful child. That’s how I recall myself, so wholly innocent of what the significance of one morning in April 1992 would be.

At about 5 a.m., the telephone disturbed me and my family from sleep. My mother caught the phone. When she hung up, my sister and I overheard her tell our father that war had begun. We couldn’t imagine what she meant, so we kept listening. Their voices were full of alarm, and we ran to be with them. From their worried faces, we could read trouble. My father wouldn’t let us go to school. What could be so drastic for him to make such a decision? From that moment my whole body was filled with fear, and with good reason as the next three and a half years proved.

By the end of them, I had become a timorous teenager from being a carefree, confident spirit. I preferred to be quietly by myself than to be with others. As a child I couldn’t wait to be with my friends. After the war, I kept myself isolated. Before I had sought out my parents if something bothered me and could cry easily. Afterwards, I just kept my feelings to myself. That child of so long ago had loved to laugh, but this new me was depressed.

I was uncomfortable with my 15 ½-year-old self. I couldn’t convince her that the terror was over at last. Any loud noise reminded me of bomb explosions. I kept telling her not to be afraid, that the war had ended. I was frankly overwhelmed with rage that I had lost this person who had been so at ease with herself and others, but I couldn’t express it. There wasn’t any satisfaction in blaming anybody. I just didn’t know what to do for almost two years. I just kept hoping I’d somehow feel better.

Finally the fall I was 17, I happened to be home alone listening to some radio station. Heavy metal music was blasting: “Deep down inside I feel to scream. / This terrible silence stops me.” The words grabbed at me. “Now that the war is through with me / I’m waking up, I cannot see / that there is not much left of me. / Nothing’s real but pain now.” I started to cry and cry and cry and cry and cry. “Now that the war is through with me / I’m waking up, I cannot see / that there is not much left of me. / Nothing’s real but pain now.” I wept for at least an hour. Those lyrics attached to my own experiences. It’s as if I had written them myself. Three and a half years of destruction passed through my head. When the tears were spent, my anger, my fury were gone.

The burden I was living with had vanished. After that, my life seemed normal again, at least as normal as it could be after such an April morning. I discovered traces of the girl I used to be. I learned how to smile again, my greatest success. I’m relieved that I can relate to other young people around me. I wonder, have you gone through the same things as I? Once I heard that childhood ends at the moment a person finds out she is going to die. For me, it was too early.

Work Cited

Metallica. “One.” By James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. And Justice for All. Elektra Entertainment. 1988.