Anna, Kharkiv
And I’m tired of counting the days. Texts are not written. Fragments of thoughts cling to each other, not having time to take shape into something whole.
I increasingly miss posts about Mariupol in social networks — I know in advance the approximate content and what emotions they will cause. I read less and less stories about how women were raped by Russian soldiers, having previously shot their husbands while their children were locked in another room (I already know
the icy anger and impotence, I do not see the need to repeat the material I have passed). Any emotion-manipulating news that doesn’t give objective information, I immediately skip it. Calmness and rationality bordering on insensitivity. My way of saving the battery.
Mom tells how one by one friends and relatives from Russia say: “Be patient, it will all be over soon.” I wonder what they mean by that. That our towns and
villages will finally be razed to the ground and cleared of the Nazis? What will freedom and security be given under the strict supervision of specially appointed people?
A curious detail. Last summer, my friends and I arranged a picnic in the park: we drank wine and ate fruit (I’m writing this and it’s amazing how much it now looks like fiction, parallel worlds). I do not remember, how it came about, but I asked my friends if they were afraid of death. Both said yes. Then I said that lately after I think of some particularly vivid adventure: there have already been so many delightful moments in my life, such as when you think: “Now I’m really alive!”, so many incredible emotions, the impossible beauty of sunsets, that if my life had ended there, it wouldn’t have happened to me upset. Moreover, when the storm of feelings subsides, I remain of the same opinion.
And it’s all true. I’m still not afraid of death. I’m afraid of the life I don’t want to live.
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Nastya Krasilnikova
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