Yesterday survived a terrorist attack, and I don’t know how to process what happened
I'm a 23 years old girl, and everything happened so fast. It all felt so surreal, and I remember how I felt in those moments so vividly. At first, I genuinely thought I was dreaming. Even afterward, I kept trying to convince myself that I was dreaming because there was no way this was actually happening. Then I started feeling like nothing around me was real, like the whole life was just happening inside my head. Eventually, I started panicking and praying.
Thankfully place was evacuated pretty quickly, and I made it out safely but there's some deaths and injuries unfortunately.
I know how lucky I am to have made it out safely, and I’m so grateful for that. But at the same time, I feel so depressed knowing that I’ve actually experienced this side of the world firsthand.
I thought, this was the hard way for me to learn that tragedy is real, and that horrible things like this actually happen to people every single day.
I can try to ignore the news and go on with my life as if everything is normal, but that doesn’t mean these things aren’t happening somewhere in the world.
And now I just feel so sad. I’ve been having all these existential thoughts and questions about life. Like, what’s even the point of all this? How are we supposed to just go back to our normal lives after experiencing something that makes the entire world feel so different? How do you go back to being the same person you were before?
I’m grateful I survived, I really am. But I also feel so overwhelmed by everything that happened, and I honestly don’t know what to do with all these feelings.
If there's anything that helped you cope with the aftermath of a traumatic experience, or anything you think might help me right now, please tell me. I'd really appreciate it. I genuinely don't know what I'm supposed to do or how to start processing all of this.