I lay in my bed night after night staring at the ceiling and thinking, Why have I survived the war? Why was I the last person in my immediate family to be alive? I didn’t know.

Ishmael Beah
About This Quote

This is a quote from the book, “A Long Way Gone,” by Ishmael Beah. He was five years old when his village in central Sierra Leone was attacked by rebels. His family was murdered and he was kidnapped for three years because the rebels thought he could identify the killers. He spent that time in a series of camps for displaced children while UNICEF worked to find his family.

It took him six years to find them and even longer to heal emotionally. The quote, taken from his journal entries, illustrates the effects of trauma on the mind.

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