It’s hard to explain to people that you’re a victim of war when you wake up in your own bed every morning, drive to campus, go to your classes, go home and start the cycle all over again.

Your house is in the same spot, your parents go to work every day, you cook dinner in your kitchen and you don’t hear fighter jets flying over your house. There is no rubble, no destroyed buildings and no dead bodies lying up and down your street.

Yet, I wake up every day with a pit in the bottom of my stomach. So do my parents. So does almost every Iranian that has been living through this war through videos, pictures and news reports on their phones.

I’m the daughter of two immigrants. My father has now lived in this country longer than he ever lived in Iran. My mother has been here for over a quarter of a century. They’ve taken root here. But I can see it in the way they talk about where they still subconsciously call home — they yearn to go back to the soil of their country.

They always say they wouldn’t have left if they didn’t have to. After the revolution in 1979, the country they love so dearly flipped upside down. What came after was religious persecution and violence from those who promised heaven but only gave hell. Soon after, an eight-year long war broke out. They’ve both seen war and death in their lifetime in ways I never thought I could comprehend.

Last December, the citizens of Iran started countrywide protests against the Islamic regime. The people had no money, no food, no stability and they’d had enough. Taking to the streets across 31 provinces, civilians fought against the government militia that were ordered to kill them. Day after day, the regime killed more innocent people, but it’s difficult to scare those who fight like they have nothing more to lose.

Knowing their crimes against humanity were going to be retaliated against, the government cut off the internet. In the little slivers of access, we saw protesters being murdered from videos and pictures documented by other protesters. Some went missing, others were arrested and those of us outside of the country were in our own prisons as we obsessively reloaded Instagram to stay updated.

Since then, it’s estimated that at least 36,500 Iranians have been executed at the hands of the Islamic regime.

This brings us to today. After over a month of the United States and Israeli militaries attacking Iranian soil and now calling a ceasefire, a non-Iranian would assume we would be happy the bombs stopped raining down.

Here’s where it gets tricky. After the initial attacks, a normal person under normal circumstances would be scared of a war breaking out in their homeland. But seeing atrocities like that makes you no longer normal, and these were not normal circumstances. It’s painful to see the cities you live in get destroyed and demolished, but the citizens of Iran knew it was for the greater good. They want the Islamic regime gone by any means necessary.

But I’m just one person, and I can only give one perspective. I can’t speak for the entire Iranian population. I’m not someone influential or important. What I do know is that we share a common denominator — we want regime change and for the people in Iran to be free.

There is a lot of speculation about what the Iranian people want. Some want the shah’s son to come back, and others are very adamant that they don’t want a king, causing some rifts within the community and making some people stray from the unified goal. It’s understandable when you take into consideration the level of stress and fear for the future many people feel. At the end of the day, they just want the freedom they’re fighting so hard for — for the thousands of people who were murdered to not die in vain.

I think the hardest part of it all is living in my own untouched world while my mind is somewhere else — waiting, praying, hoping and grieving what was, what is and what could be. This is so much more than a war in a foreign land and high gas prices. It’s for my parents, for those who have died, for those still in Iran and for the future generations who just want a peaceful life and a stable future. But all I can do is keep going and hope that, finally, I’ll see the same Iran that my parents saw and that their home will be free.