Natalia, Zaporizhzhia

I packed my things quickly, the fascination with the post-apocalypse came in handy. At the first siren, we went down to the shelter in an organized manner. I’m generally a timid person in life, a bag will fall next to me, I’m already yelling, so it’s easy to imagine what happened to me for the first 3-4 days. The children were also scared. The middle daughter, 16 years old, refused to sleep without a jacket, only took off her shoes. For the first two nights, the children took turns on duty. And I went to bed – to be honest, I just collapsed from fatigue.

Gradually everything got better. More precisely, we somehow came to our senses. We’ve already overslept the air alarm twice, it somehow became a fig or something. In the evenings we sit in the dark. I recently found an old cardboard map of the world and attached it to the kitchen window, so now you can turn on the light there in the evenings.

I am very glad that our army is fighting back with dignity, and no, I do not consider myself bloodthirsty. “The fewer of them, the more of us,” as the character of one zombie movie said. In fact, they were not invited here, no one was waiting for them here.

Children are constantly demanding to leave. I am not allowed to leave the house alone, only my son walks. The others are in twos. They began to hug more often. Father has long been off the books. As it turned out, the legend of the “strong male shoulder” in our case has remained a legend. The husband then falls into apathy, then begins to command out of the blue. He quit his job a long time ago, his mother helps us, and now, when I personally have to naturally clench my teeth and pull myself together, my husband is whining and angry. We have lived together for 22 years in April. And I’m seriously thinking of breaking up with him after the war.

My mother has been living in the village since 1991, now you can’t get to her without a car. We call each other every day, she keeps cheerful, but I hear tears in her voice. There is no one to help her, thank you that relatives “by car” managed to bring food.

I really don’t want to leave, especially for a foreign country. My son and husband are of military age, so they will not be released. I often get angry: they kick me out of my home. This is unacceptable and humiliating.
I’ve never had anxiety, and now I have, and it’s unbearable. OCD has worsened, there is often a feeling of complete frustration, helplessness, and confusion. But I can’t afford to show it.

Huge support from people from the Internet – I’ve been blogging on diary.ru and on dybr.ru, I participate in Fandom battles as a fikreiter, so people from the teams are very supportive. They sent money, and we live on it now. Acquaintances cope every day, whether I’m okay with my family or not. And if it annoys someone, then, on the contrary, it supports me. You can’t stay alone right now, it’s a direct path to a personal hell.

Gradually, life seems to be “getting better”. There are products in stores, people are no longer rowing their boxes. We installed the application “Povitryana Trivoga”, now we receive alerts much faster. They took blankets and pillows to the shelter, plugged in sockets, that would still be punching the Internet. It’s a pity that the elevators were turned off, it’s too hard to climb to the 9th floor.

Plans for “after the war”? I want to solve something with work, I hope that my schoolgirls will be able to continue their studies. The eldest needs to pass a diploma – the last year of the university. But my main hopes are connected precisely with surviving.