Scars

At first, you feel no pain. The shock is too big. It drives you mad, when you don't realize what actually happened. You are all one shock. Nothing else. You can't often hear other people, you can only gape in unbelief.
Then you realize what actually happened. You feel all this pain at once, which can overwhelm you and make you wish to stop this pain in any way: by falling unconscious, by drinking heavily, even by dying. You pray for this to stop, and can't actually do anything reasonable.
After this, you want to cry so hard that the pain stops burning you so much. You feel soothed when your wounds are cleansed with tears. Then comes great sorrow. You mourn over yourself and the others.
your wounds slowly start to heal. If they are deep, they leave scars. Scars don't hurt, they only bring back the memories of pain. In the end, you get used to your scars. They may remind you the past, but you don't have any strong emotions looking at them.
And when your wounds are healed and you have new scars, you may raise your head with pride and show your scars.
And you may say, "Look at my scars. I went through all this pain and sorrow, and it made me stronger! Look, I survived. I don't need any medals. My scars are my medals!"