After being cooped up at home since Saturday (apart from quick runs for supplies to the supermarket next door), my depression hit such a state that I decided I needed to walk outside for a bit, before my PTSD gets completely out of hand. The streets were deserted, the local pool dried out and closed, the marina abandoned.

The weather was perfect and the sea calm, but the beach was empty and no lifeguards were around.

The busy Independence Garden was deserted — no runners, no cyclers, the only person I saw was a grandpa walking his dog.

I’ve never seen it like this — there are people in this area at all times of day and night.

Today was marked by a lot of scares of attacks from Hizballah in the Lebanon, and a human error that sent all the country (including myself) to the shelters for several minutes as we thought that a swarm of explosive laden drones was about to crash land into buildings. These once sci-fi thriller scenarios are now our reality. The neighbors brought food and water into the shelter, and we had several nearby rocket falls (imagine a loud “boom!” and the building shaking around you).

I also learned that the 17-year-old boy that I regularly saw selling flowers at the local farmer’s market was murdered as he went surfing on Saturday with a friend. Just like the paramedic who chose to remain with the wounded in the kibbuz clinic instead of saving herself and was butchered, or the two middle-aged bike riders that were murdered because they couldn’t outride gunshots, or the children that were bound and shot point blank with their parents.

The number of dead is now at around the 1,200 mark, with hundreds more wounded, and hundreds taken hostage into Gaza. The morgues are overwhelmed with the number of the dead, doctors and nurses are overwhelmed with the number of the wounded, and everyone is bracing for what is yet to come.

I sketched the empty Gordon pool.