The Music That Survives the Ruins
One of the quietest lines in my book says:
"Ruined rooms can still contain music."
I wrote that line without realizing how much of my life was already hidden inside it.
When people hear the word ruins, they often imagine abandoned buildings. Cracked walls. Broken windows. Places that once held life but have long since been forgotten.
Trauma feels like that sometimes.
Not because it destroys everything.
Because it changes the way you walk through the rooms inside yourself.
There are memories I still enter carefully.
Conversations I still replay.
Doors that, even years later, I still hesitate to open.
For a long time, I believed healing meant rebuilding those rooms until they looked untouched.
Until no one could tell they had ever been broken.
I don't believe that anymore.
Life has taught me something gentler.
Perhaps healing is not the disappearance of the cracks.
Perhaps it is learning that light still knows how to find them.
When I was writing I Wrote So I Would Not Fade, I wasn't trying to write beautiful poetry.
I was trying to survive another day.
Some poems came after panic attacks.
Some came after long nights when my thoughts refused to become quiet.
Some came after moments I still don't know how to describe.
Looking back, I can see that I wasn't building something perfect.
I was listening.
Listening for any sound that proved I was still here.
That is what the music became.
Not melodies.
Hope.
Very small hope.
The kind that doesn't arrive with fireworks.
The kind that whispers,
"Write one more page."
"Stay one more day."
"There is still something worth saying."
People sometimes ask whether writing healed me.
I don't know if that is the right word.
Writing did not erase what happened.
It did not make every difficult day disappear.
It did something quieter.
It gave the silence somewhere to breathe.
It reminded me that even pain can become language.
And language can become connection.
That is why I still believe ruined rooms can contain music.
Not because suffering is beautiful.
I would never call it that.
But because human beings have an extraordinary ability to create tenderness in places that should have only echoed with loss.
A poem.
A conversation.
A hand reaching for another.
A song that understands us before another person does.
These are all forms of music.
None of them erase the ruins.
They simply remind us that the ruins are not empty.
If you are reading this while carrying your own invisible rooms, I hope you know you do not have to pretend they were never damaged.
You do not have to repaint every wall before you allow someone inside.
You are allowed to say,
"This room still hurts."
You are allowed to say,
"I'm still learning how to live here."
There is no shame in that.
Perhaps courage has never been about hiding the broken places.
Perhaps it has always been about believing they are still capable of holding something beautiful.
That is what I hoped this line would mean.
Not that pain becomes poetry.
But that even after life has taken more from us than we thought we could bear...
Something inside us still chooses to sing.
And perhaps...
that quiet song is enough.
— Jean T. Hatoum
Author of I Wrote So I Would Not Fade
Author of I Wrote So I Would Not Fade and J’ai Écrit Pour Ne Pas M’effacer
If these words felt like home, the rest of the map is in the book.
And if you are able to, supporting my journey helps me afford the medication that keeps my own fractured ember burning.
I’m not finished surviving out loud. 🕊️
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