Nadia, Kiev/Lviv/Poland/Germany

I remember how everything shrank inside. I didn’t understand what to do, where to run, what to take. I had my backpack ready, a child was sleeping next to me, I was alone in the apartment. I abruptly got up, went to smoke, heard some explosions in the distance, apparently from Gostomel. I packed all the food I had in my backpack, packed my laptop, called the person important to me.

Then events developed very strangely. I wrote to me they wrote. By 06:30, everyone was on their ears. For three hours I moved from the chair to the window, wrote a post about psychological help, connected to a psychological group, collected things in parallel, smoked. We spent one night in a shelter, because there were strong explosions from Gostomel, in the morning we returned home, and in the evening we were taken to the village. We stayed in the village
a week, then we went to Lviv, we were there for two days, then we went to Poland, and from Poland to Germany. We were traveling on a terrible evacuation train, not even a train, but an electric train. For 14 hours we sat in the vestibule, my daughter sat on my hiking backpack. The stationary toilet broke down, and a new one was arranged next to us — in the place where the cars connect.

How I made the decision to leave Ukraine: when the war began, the first thing I wanted to do was to protect the child. We managed to go to the store that day, and I caught myself thinking: what should I do if she gets hurt? I’m in a backpack I threw in a lot of medicines, a military first aid kit, gauze, dressing, even a syringe, if I suddenly need to let the air out of my lungs (I have a medical education). I realized that my psyche would not survive if I saw the death of my child or physical trauma. Therefore, she left on the basis that she needed to be saved. In the shelter, I thought only about how much water, food, how to change her clothes, how not to freeze to her, that’s why we didn’t immediately leave the city for the village. And when the food started to run out, I began to think strategically: what if she gets sick, needs medical help? More relatives have turned please note that suddenly there will be no departure later, military operations will unfold even more. Partly, of course, anxiety and panic played their part, plus some kind of impulsiveness. But, thinking strategically ahead, how to support your family and yourself… I have such a profession, a psychologist, that I can earn money, and many now have problems with work. I’m still wondering if it was the right decision. On the one hand, security, on the other, I want to be with my own, to help, living through this horror and experience.