Part 2

I am sitting on the sofa with my knees next to my chin. This is the way I spend hours. To be more specific, I am sitting on the sofa with my knees next to my chin feeling extremely anxious. Frustration is a really good word to describe my feelings. When you lose safety, you lose everything. The way of life I used to live has been destroyed, I don’t know what to do.

Really, I can’t do anything. 

I can’t go to work. I am an English teacher, but my students are at bomb shelters or on their way way from this town. I am useless here. Also, it always takes time to prepare for the lessons, but again, this thing I haven’t been really keen on doing, is not needed. I can’t cook – my grandmother does it far better. And actually this is her kitchen where she manages everything. 

I can clean up, but what for… ‘No matter how clean is the place where I can be killed…’P

It seems like everything lost sense in a second. 

This is the beginning of my overthinking the lifestyle. Suddenly, all the arguments with my parents and my husband got useless. I started apologizing for everything I have done. I felt so guilty, it’s really strange. As if I had just a few hours to confess to all misunderstandings, lies, careless intonation. But this concerned only my way of getting this. Nobody else around probably didn’t feel this way. But I also can explain this, as they are at a loss too. Psychologists may describe this situation referring to the differences in mindsets and personalities… 

One more thing I notice is that we face the fear of death differently. Firstly, I was the person who seemed to wait to be killed every second. I was ready for death and was frightened simultaneously. My father and my husband, again it’s only my prediction, got into deeper consideration and assessed the probabilities of being shot, so they looked more confident. But confidence is vague here. My mother is not a person who shows her sincere emotions, so it was rather difficult to understand where she was at that point. The calmest member of the family was my grandmother. I should mention that she had been living a tough life, really overwhelming trouble etc. She told me that ‘if you were born, there is no other option, but to die, anyway’. She accepted it as a natural thing. Really, when you admit your temporality and let it go, it’s easier. The only tiny stumbling block here is the idea that you are not in your eighties in a huge comfortable bed surrounded with grandchildren, but just a young victim of a missile attack. 

• I don’t know what can be worse than to be killed with a bomb. It might hurt and scare.
• Remaining alive, but disabled. That’s worse…
• Yes, you are probably right.

My thoughts were occupied with death too much. 

Then, we all, not only me, develop a new addiction. News-addiction. One good thing is that suddenly we all felt closer, even to the people who we are not acquainted with. Everybody wanted to take part in this war, at least using information and communication sources. We had subscribed to some news channels on Telegram and spent hours reading. The brain was going mad with the news. Each piece of news was worse than the previous. Later, I will tell you about the positive news that used to save our mental health in the basement under bombing and fighter planes…

But now we are still in a flat on the first day of the ‘full-scale’ invasion.

What can surprise you is that the first day didn’t bring us a lot of bombing, shooting and fear. Maybe it was enough for us to be struck with the fact our life would never be the same. 

It was relatively quiet, so we had time to sort things out. Fortunately, social media was a stick in time giving us the instructions of what to do. 

My father had, pay attention to the tense I used here, a garage with a cellar across the road. I must mention that “the road” here is a 10-meter wide avenue leading away from the town. I think it took 10 minutes to get from the block of flats, go round the building, get to the road, cross the road and run a little distance to the garage. Then, open the garage and get into the cellar (read ‘a safe place’ here).

So, we used this quiet time to arrange this safe space in our garage. We took some tires, old carpets and pillows to make this humid dark cold place convenient. It’s worth saying it’s February, not a nice July or at least promisingly warm April. I was coughing a bit. Next two days partially spent in this cellar were not really good for my health, as this cough was developing into some kind of lung disease. Could you imagine the choice between a risk of developing pneumonia and dying from a bomb. You know, out can work wonders. It seemed like my immune system accumulated all the resources and fiercely attacked viruses in my body. Stress worked as an engine here. Unfortunately, all the resources are limited and everything should be paid back.

The mood or rather ‘vibe’ of the people around – it is temporary, it won’t last for long. We must just wait a bit and it all will pass… We will get it over quickly. How naïve we are… How desperate we will turn out to be in a few days. But now it’s the late evening of the first day of the war. My least lonely, but most disappointing evening. And I don’t know how to go to bed…