Ten years ago to the day, Muhammad Bouazizi set himself on fire. It triggered protests in Tunisia, but I remember paying it little attention on the news.

It's hard not to interweave details of my personal life in between the events of that winter. One month later my grandmother passed away. She had been the glue that held the family together, and I had always been close to her as she and my aunt had practically raised me.

Little did I know it, but my politics were shifting at the time, too. From being an angry-at-something-but-don't-know-what anti-imperialist to a more pragmatic and perhaps more jaded young man.

I flew to Damascus on what would be my last trip. The protests in Libya were turning nasty by then, and things were starting to heat up in Egypt too. The words of the poet Abulqasem Al Shabi were resonating deeply within me..

إِذا الشَّعْبُ يوماً أرادَ الحياةَ. فلا بُدَّ أنْ يَسْتَجيبَ القدرْ. ولا بُدَّ للَّيْلِ أنْ ينجلي. ولا بُدَّ للقيدِ أن يَنْكَسِرْ

"If one day the people will for life, then destiny must oblige. And the night shall pass, and the bonds will break"

It dawned on me at the time that I and many Syrians were absolutely terrified of saying something about the Assad regime. That some red lines had been imprinted so deeply within our consciousness that we had pretended all our lives they weren't there.

There were initial protests in Damascus, but these came to nothing, and people breathed a sigh of relief. Then Deraa happened, and for Syrians, this changed everything.

We had all convinced ourselves that this was a new Syria under Bashar al Assad. We had Coca Cola and iPhones, we had new cars. We had Costa Coffee. Change was in the air. People were investing.

But this was a lie. People were also going hungry. People couldn't find jobs. I remember seeing a little buy sniffing glue in the fashionable Qassa'a shopping district as he darted in between the shoppers. I remember noticing there were more beggars in the streets now.

When the Syrian revolution happened, it hit us like a tidal wave. I had come back from Syria and the funeral convinced that no revolution could happen there. That people liked Bashar.

Within weeks I was seeing the first videos of security forces shooting people in the streets. One video made me feel physically ill. A man in a morgue had been shot in the head by the security services. The inside of his head was empty. I couldn't take it anymore.

There used to be a popular website and blog aggregator, Syplanet, where Syrian bloggers would discuss and argue adn share. It was strangely silent. I reached out to @rallaf and we realised we were all too frightened to speak. We had family back in Syria after all.

I wrote to @Brian_Whit at the Guardian next, and offered to write under a pseudonym. He kindly agreed. I was utterly terrified, but also furious with relatives and friends who were pretending nothing was happening. I wrote like I was possessed.

In May my very first article came out. I had chosen to write under a female pseudonym, one of my many online pseudonyms at the time https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/may/26/syrians-indifferent-injustice

I wrote and I wrote. I connected with wonderful Syrians I'd never known existed, and eventually ended up volunteering with the @karamfoundation - one of the most enriching and beautiful experiences in my life.

The Syrian revolution turned sour before finally curdling under the weight of international indifference, the brutal onslaught of the Assad regime and its allies, and the barbarism and stupidity of Islamist movements.

The country's brightest and best are now either dead, in prison, or exiled. Today, Syrians have shortages of bread, heating fuel, and petrol. But they can buy an iPhone 12. It's a pitiful state of affairs.

The Arab Spring did bring death and destruction against the region, but this was wrought by those who think it is too much of the people to ask for dignity, democracy, and a respect for human rights.

Was it all worth it? Would we do it all again? Probably not. The death of a single refugee by drowning or fire or starvation wasn't worth it. But then the murder of each civilian by the State services was itself worthy of a revolution.

For a brief moment of time there was a breath of fresh air and optimism blowing across the region. I felt in my chest, as did millions of other people from the region, the most wondrous sensation of breaking the fear barrier, of feeling truly and utterly free.

When all is said and done, I think it managed to bring the very best out of us. I do not believe we are in the closing chapters of democracy and human rights in the Arab world. This is not where our story ends. There is potential for an incredible future ahead of us.

We may not see this future in our lifetimes, but in the years and decades to come, some may look back at this impossible decade and say we live free and in dignity today because of those who died yesterday.

Sorry for the mega-thread, but I had to get this all of my chest. It's been a decade of so much change and turbulence, and so much has been lost, that it's difficult to conceive how the world was before Bouazizi's act.

May Bouazizi and the hundreds of thousands of people who died rest in peace. Whether they were the lucky ones or we who have lived to see these times, only time will tell.