Maybe, One Day — A Story of Survival and the Long Road to Hope

This story is dedicated to every soul who ever had to start over, not by choice, but by force.

It was a winter morning.

The kind where the frost bites at the edges of your window and the world feels still — like it’s holding its breath. But that morning, something shattered. Not the glass, not the silence. My life.

I didn’t expect them. They didn’t knock. They didn’t speak. Just shadows in uniforms with guns like punctuation marks — ending every sentence I hadn’t had the chance to say.

My child was still asleep in the corner, his tiny feet poking out from under a threadbare blanket. I had no time to scream. No time to think. Just time to fall. Fall from everything I had ever called safe.

And suddenly, my world, the one I had so carefully built with bedtime songs and birthday cakes and school shoes, crumbled.

I lay on a cold floor in a place I had never seen before, stripped of everything — including dignity. They threw me torn clothes, as if that would somehow stitch my soul back together.

I remember thinking, This isn’t happening. This can’t be real.

But the bruises, the silence, the staring walls — they all said otherwise.

I once believed I was untouchable.

Not because I was arrogant, but because I had been raised in love. A good family. Sunday dinners. A dad who showed up. A mum who taught me to be kind. A home where hugs were currency and laughter was music.

But life doesn’t care about how well you were raised.

It takes what it wants — especially when you're a woman, especially in a world where power forgets mercy.

They called it a “mistake.”

A mix-up. A misjudged identity. Bureaucracy at its most brutal.

But how do you explain that to a heart that’s forgotten how to beat without fear?

How do you tell a child that mummy didn’t leave — she was taken?

Still, maybe...

Maybe there’s another life waiting.

Maybe I get to start again.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll look in the mirror one day and see beauty, not brokenness.

And the tears I cry every night? I’ll say it’s the cold. Or a movie. Or nothing.

Because if I don’t say it out loud, maybe it won’t be real.

People think trauma shouts.

But it doesn’t. It whispers.

In how you flinch when a door slams.

In how you double-lock everything.

In how you memorise escape routes in coffee shops.

My child is growing.

Safe now. Thanks to strangers who cared.

He dreams of building rockets, and I let him.

Because maybe that dream will carry him far away from everything I couldn’t protect him from.

Maybe he’ll never know how close I came to disappearing.

Maybe he’ll only know the strength I faked — not the fear I drowned in.

And some nights, I allow myself the fantasy:

That I will forget.

That this weight will lift.

That the world will be kind again.

That one day, I will walk through a door, inhale the scent of safety, and smile without faking it.

But until then…

I’ll raise my son with stories of resilience, not revenge.

I’ll wear lipstick when I feel like it — even if my soul feels grey.

I’ll walk through this broken world, still looking for light.

And if the tears come again — every night, like they always do — I’ll let them fall in secret.

Because they don’t mean I’m weak.

They just mean I remember.

Maybe there’s another life.

Maybe I get to begin again.

Maybe beauty will return to this face.

And if I cry every night — well, that’s just between me and the moon.