Can You Live With Something New? (English Version)

New Year 's Eve

New year's Eve 2010

Just a week ago everything was different, my whole family was with me and none of us had ever imagined that something like this would happen.

Seven days ago we were still happy and sitting together at the dinner table and laughing.

It was just seven days ago that my siblings and I unpacked our Christmas presents.

That day, I was sure next year everything would be different and that I would be accepted to a school where I would no longer be bullied.

I hoped that next year would be better than this, because in this, my dad had lost his job in the financial sector due to the economic crisis and we were forced to sell our newly built house and live in a very old one for rent.

Recently, I had a family that loved and supported me in spite of everything, until suddenly our whole house went up in the air.

A gas explosion.

We all sat together at the dinner table, ate chicken, talked, laughed and all of a sudden a precial wave went through the house until I heard a deafening bang.

I can still remember the feeling of being ripped into the air and landing onto the rubble.

I don't know how I survived.

The last thing I saw was the corpse of my youngest sister, who had been lying next to me under all the rubble. Not far from us, our parents and a few meters away from them our grandparents. I couldn't find my other two siblings before losing my consciousness. They were trapped even deeper under the rubble, according to the fire brigade who told me that two hours ago.

I was the oldest sister and felt like I having failed at being the big sister that has to watch out and care for the smaller ones.

 I had nothing left.

I no longer had a family that was there for me, in good as well as bad times, which would welcome me with open arms after my hospital stay.

I didn't have a home, let alone my old stuff.

Everything I owned had disappeared whithin a moment.

Why did I have to survive?

Why did my three-year-old sister have to die when she still had her whole life ahead of her? Just like my other two little siblings.

Why couldn't I just go to heaven with my family? If there was anything like that.

I was probably still in shock, because all I felt in that hospital bed now was icy emptiness in my chest. As if I couldn't really realize what had happened, but I knew better. I knew what had happened, but I was empty inside. I had lost everything and felt... Nothing.

I was exhausted. Perhaps it was also because of the strong painkillers that I only perserated everything.

I still had the helpless feeling of lying on the rubble of our wretched house and not being able to move. I could only look at my little sweet sister, whose petite body was barely recognizable. She had been smeared and burned in many places. 

The smell of burnt meat still hung in my nose. The only thing I could do was lie paralyzed and try to find my family as best as I could with my eyes.

I closed my eyes as I felt the tears rising into them and tried to hold them back again for the thousandth time.

I didn't want to cry here. Not now. Otherwise, everything would be too real.

I couldn't afford to mourn my family now. I didn't want it all to become true. It was better not to think of anything. But it was harder than I thought.

I pinched my eyes tighter and noticed how I could push the tears slowly but successfully, backwards.

I had only been awake for twenty-four hours, and the nurses' voices were pouring into me like being under water, so I didn't understand a word they were saying when I suddenly felt an unpleasant pressure in my right arm bend. I looked down and saw the nurse exchanging the old infusion.

According to the doctors, it was a miracle that I was still alive and relatively well out of the disaster. Both of my feet were broken, as well as my left arm. Every breath hurt because my two ribs were broken too and I had severe burns all over my body. Slowly and agonisingly, I felt how it started to burn in my chest. After a short time, my lungs felt like they were literally on fire.

Not again.

I scrastled to tell the nurse that the pain was slowly coming back and gaining the upper hand over my body, but my voice failed at the first word and I suddenly got so tired that I had problems to keep my eyes open. Stars danced in front of my eyes and suddenly I saw my sister again.

Unfortunately, I felt such an intense pain at the area around my heart that it overshadowed every other pain and stole the breath that I almost didn't have. I tried to breathe deeply.

In the last twenty-four hours I was awake, I had too much time to think.

Which was certainly not good for me. I would go mad if I carried on like this. But I couldn't.

Where should I go if I was released? Living on the streets was not a good idea, because I couldn't even sit for the next few months, let alone just walk.

I had so many questions to which I didn't know the answer and suddenly I didn't want to fight against the fatigue anymore.

In the twenty-four hours, I was tired of trying to play the strong one. I couldn't do it anymore.

Why had I been left alone here?

Why did something like this had to happen to me?

How for God's sake should I ever be happy again and live a normal life when I had lost the people who meant the most to me?

My head was roaring and my eyelids shut slowely.

The darkness enveloped me, like a cold shadow that bored his claws deep into me, right into my heart.

I panicked.

How should my life go on?