Why is this happening
Why is it one thing after the other
Why won't they stop
I'm so fucking scared
- Donna, season 3
My husband and I have been watching a show called From together every night. If you don’t know it, it’s about a group of people who all end up stuck in this decrepit town in the middle of nowhere because of some supernatural curse. Every night, monsters that look human - creepy smiles, dead eyes - come out and kill anyone they can get their hands on. It’s a show that gets under your skin.
Somewhere between the jump scares, I realized I was relating to the characters in a weird way. They reminded me of what it felt like to live in Beirut. Not Beirut the city, not the place I love, but the version of it we’d been forced to live in lately. Like them, we’d found ourselves scared of what the night might bring, dreading those hours when the dark felt a little too real, wondering what could happen next. But unlike the show, the monsters we’ve been dealing with don’t go away when the sun comes up. They’re far worse than anything on screen, leaving images of death and destruction that make the show’s horrors look tame.
In From, they’re constantly on edge, grasping at anything that might help them survive another day. Watching them, I thought, Yeah, I know that feeling. You adapt, stay alert, tell yourself that if you’re careful enough, you’ll be okay. But deep down, you know that no amount of caution can change what’s happening. As one of the characters, Tabitha, says, “We can't keep living like this, waiting for the next bad thing to happen.”
Then there’s the hope. Even in that horrible place, they keep believing they’ll find a way out, that someone will help, something will change. I know that kind of hope - the quiet, almost desperate hope that if you just hold on, you’ll make it out of this in one piece. I also know what it feels like to have that hope crushed.
It’s strange, finding comfort in a horror show, seeing your own life mirrored in a town full of curses and monsters. But maybe that’s what it’s been like for us - learning to live with shadows, with the sense that safety is just a fragile illusion.
Now, we’re waiting for the season finale of From to finally get some answers, just like we’re waiting for a decision on a ceasefire. And as much as we long for things to change, there’s always that feeling lingering in the back of your mind: “the best way to make us suffer is to give us hope.”
👏🏻👏🏻