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🌟 A Cry for Help: My Family’s Struggle to Survive in Gaza 🌟

Hello, my name is Areej Kassab. I’m a 27-year-old English teacher and writer from Gaza, and I’m reaching out to you with a heavy heart and a desperate plea for support. My family and I are enduring unimaginable hardships as relentless bombings devastate our home and our dreams.

We are a family of 15—10 adults and 5 children. Every day is a battle for survival. Food is scarce, humanitarian aid is not reaching us, and my little nieces and nephews go to bed hungry. Among them is my sister, who is deaf, and another sister who has a newborn baby. They, too, are suffering in this crisis, and I’m doing everything I can to protect and provide for them.

💔 A Life in Ruins The war has robbed us of everything: safety, peace, and even the hope of a future here. My family’s needs are basic yet critical—food, clean water, diapers for the babies, gas for cooking, and other essentials to make it through each day.

With rising prices and limited access to necessities, we are struggling to provide even the most basic items. My sister’s home has been destroyed, and we are working together to ensure everyone has shelter, food, and warmth.

✨ My Plea for Your Support ✨ I’m a writer, and I’ve been documenting the harsh realities faced by my community under siege. But words can only do so much. We need action, and we need help. Your kindness can save us.

🙏 How You Can Help

Donate: Every contribution, no matter how small, brings us closer to securing the essentials we desperately need.

Share Our Story: If you can’t donate, please share this post to help us reach others who can.

Your support will help provide food for the children, clean water for my family, and basic supplies to help us survive this unimaginable crisis.

Thank you for reading, for caring, and for standing in solidarity with us. Together, we can create a lifeline for my family—a chance to live, to dream, and to hope again.

With love and gratitude, Areej Kassab ❤️

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from The Memory Palace, by Nate DiMeo

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just finished watching the banshees of inisherin and i am ABSOLUTELY devastated. thinking of how colm said “thanks for watching my dog” and padraic replying “anytime” and just…the sheer despair of it all. friendship breakups are always like: you used to be one of my favourite people and yes i loathe you for suddenly ending things but the love we once shared and the history between us is insurmountable and if you ever wish to come back i’ll still be here and i always will be. the door’s always open, you know your way around right? it’s the same as how you left it…

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it’s about being soft and the world eating you up if you don’t harden and the mind numbing monotony of everyday bitterness and no money and petty violence and what happens if your one person decides they don’t want to be your person anymore and who cares about being remembered if you aren’t nice vs who cares about being nice if you aren’t remembered and how terrible small scale tragedies can be even going up against giant horrors like a civil war and what do you do if you hate your home and everyone in it and how do you cope when someone you love uses your love for them to keep you away

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sorry but i've been thinking about this forever

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I need months of doing nothing but the things that amuse me. Like watching movies, read, draw. All to live, not to be productive.

Why is it so hard to just live and give out love of living to contribute?

Why must i be measured by how many times i help achieve a company’s dream? Someone else’s dream?

I was born to live and not to solely survive.

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No you don't get it, I'm a Good Person. You don't understand. I'm a Good Person which makes it okay for me to think violently about the Enemy, who is Bad Person. I'm commenting "you should be violently murdered" because I'm Good Person and you're Bad Person. You think saying that to someone is fucked up?? You should be violently murdered, you're probably Bad Person anyway

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James Baldwin.

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new ask polly changing my life per usual

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Oh i want to fucking scream my existence to oblivion

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While children around the world enjoy the summer holidays within the safety and comfort of their homes and plan fun beach trips with their families, our kids' childhood has been reduced to securing the bare minimum of food and water, fending off swarms of disease-carrying insects, and enduring the stifling heat inside the hellish tent. Seeing them fill water containers and struggle to carry them with their tiny hands breaks my heart into a million pieces. Our babies fall asleep drenched in sweat and keep waking up crying and gasping for breath. What makes it even more unbearable are the plagues of flies and mosquitoes that keep torturing their little fragile, malnourished bodies, increasing the risk of contracting infectious diseases, with no medical care available. They also face a very real and imminent threat of dehydration due to water and formula scarcity.Their older siblings are encumbered by burdens way beyond their years. They think it is their responsibility to fill heavy water containers and protect the newborns, but the truth is they are as vulnerable to the same threats that keep growing every day. No child should live in such a hostile environment. Rubble, garbage, and the smell of death are all around.

Our kids used to have a beautiful spacious home built after years of toil and sacrifice, just to be turned into ruins in the blink of an eye. Now, they are given no other choice but to be confined to the tight airless space of a makeshift tent swarming with all sorts of insects. Even if they go outside the only things that await them are the scorching sun, the hot summer air, and foul smells all day long. The summer nights are often equally suffocating depriving them of desperately needed sleep.

Using a wood-fired self-made stove to cook is beyond torture in such heat. It is also very dangerous to the children who keep going close to it. My heart sinks each time I see pictures of them next to the fire. Even preparing a baby bottle,if ever available, is an ordeal in such conditions but my family have no other options. They have been enduring unfathomable, relentless suffering for nine months straight, and they have been more than resilient but they are now way beyond exhausted. They have been daily fighting for their very survival but there's no guarantee of safety anywhere in Gaza as not only what is left of the buildings but also the tents are being indiscriminately bombed every single day. Even going to the beach to escape the sweltering heat has become a perilous journey for my family, and countless others, since civilians keep being targeted with airstrikes there too.

My family were not allowed to have even the slightest respite since the beginning of this waking nightmare. They have been striving to survive bombing, malnutrition, disease, the cold winter, and now the deadly heatwaves.

When I left Gaza shortly before the war, my dream was to build a brighter future for my loved ones. I have never imagined, once in my life, that I would be raising funds to literally save their lives. Now, my only wish is to keep them alive and as safe as possible, given the circumstances.

Your support is their only hope and solace amidst all the pain and loss. Please do whatever you can to help me save them from this brutal literal decimation of our people. Every contribution counts! Keep our babies in your thoughts and prayers 🙏 And Please donate any amount you can spare and reblog as often as you can. It is beyond words to say how grateful I am to everyone standing with us 🙏

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What a thing to say!

What a person to pull!

Wow!

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Once again asking why there was a music festival at the edge of the world's largest open air prison where people were dancing and partying while people were being starved and imprisoned so close to them. How is that a "peaceful" festival.

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 ― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

[text ID: In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart.]

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im still in love, but sort of in a different place?

I was more hurt and angry before. But now i just realize that it’s still beautiful.

And that it will still be here. Maybe always be here.

Because it’s you. And i dont mind if i can only watch from the sidelines.

Maybe later I’ll be in a different place and after learning how to be kind and be better for myself. I’ll find it in someone else too.

But even then, i think i will still love you.

You didn’t realize it but you brought in so many differences. There are things I still couldn’t understand about being happy and discarding the sadness we all have inside ourselves.

To me, knowing the dark part of ourselves and somehow the darkness that resonates with this world, is essential for us to be okay with things not be ok.

But, what i feel and what you shared to me, just clicks something within me. I dont know what. But I know i long for more beautiful moments in life, ones i dont have that i didn’t bother to put effort to achieve. Maybe because i think i don’t deserve it.

But i think i want to try now. To be happier. At least to be kinder to myself.

So, yeah. Thank you. And you’ll always have my love and support. I love you.