I spent a total of four years in Gaza, six months of which were during the ongoing war. Never have I felt so helpless in the face of this mighty war machine, which was stuffing new bullets into its gun after firing the previous one, with a seemingly unlimited supply of ammunition.

In September, I interviewed a matriarch who runs a shelter for displaced people in Khan Younis. I asked her what hopes she had for the prospects of peace. She pointed to a little girl holding her mother’s hand and sucking her thumb. “Five days ago, her father was killed when their house was bombed and they were unable to recover his body from the rubble because the area was under constant shelling,” she said. “What hope?”

In desperate Gaza, sleep is one of the most precious commodities. Back in January, after a particularly loud and close impact, we would run to the window and watch the smoke fill the sky. But over time, they have become so common that almost no one cares to pay attention anymore.

Every night in my neighborhood of Deir al-Balah, the bombing begins at night, just as people are getting ready for bed. We would hear the whoosh of missiles, and then a huge explosion that shook the windows. The explosions wake local dogs, donkeys, babies and anyone else who dares to sleep, triggering a chain reaction of barking, crying and other agitated noises. More bombs will come, followed by gunfire of various types until everything goes quiet for a while. The call to dawn prayers often triggers another series of attacks.

The apocalyptic scenarios everyone sees on TV are much more harrowing in reality. I often find myself deleting photos and videos from my phone because the camera can’t do justice to how weird my surroundings appear to the naked eye.

Personally, the visuals come with a lot of sound. This includes the now daily ritual of people scrambling for bread at nearby bakeries as food supplies are dwindling, commercial goods are almost completely cut off, and humanitarian aid entry is subject to ongoing and paralyzing restrictions. Just the week before, a woman and two girls were trampled in front of a bakery and a fight broke out over not having enough bread, resulting in the pair suffocating.

My dear friend Khalid, who runs community kitchens across Gaza, is worried that soon there will be no food and his kitchen will have to close. I struggle to find anything helpful to say to him given the reality around us and cry every time we speak because I too have lost hope. “Don’t cry, Olga,” he always said. “Be strong, like us.” Indeed, the strength of the Palestinians is unparalleled.

In November, the Famine Review Commission (an ad hoc body of international technical experts that reviews potential famine classifications determined by the United Nations and other actors) issued a report that once again sounded the alarm about the looming threat of famine, particularly in in the troubled north. Gaza. From then on, things only got worse. A few times I saw people picking up bags of flour that had fallen off the rescue truck and spilled dirty flour on the road.

Prioritizing Gaza’s most vulnerable is a hopeless task, as little aid is available. With 100% of the approximately 2.3 million people in need, would you choose to help pregnant women, survivors of domestic violence, or homeless people with disabilities? Are you looking for all of these risks in one person? The pain of these choices will keep us awake long after our work in Gaza ends.

During the months we spent in Gaza, my colleagues and I witnessed so much pain, tragedy and death that we have no words to express the horror. We picked up corpses from the roadside – some still warm, bleeding profusely, some rigor mortis, half eaten by dogs.

Some of the bodies were that of young boys. The boys were murdered senseless, some slowly dying from blood loss, and they were left frightened and alone, while their mothers agonized over why their sons didn’t come home that night. To the rest of the world, they are just another number in a grim tally of Gaza’s death toll so far – which now stands at more than 45,500, according to the health ministry.

In rare moments of quiet and amid the chaos of constant crisis, I reflect on everything around me and ask myself, “What is hope?”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.