Nina, Kyiv/Ternopil

A couple of days before the war, grandfather for some reason climbed on a stool, he wanted to take something off the closet. Fell. Fractured pelvic bone, bed rest for three months. So we weren’t hiding anywhere, we shouldn’t leave him. And for a cat with an ICD to spend time in a cold subway is a death sentence. And so they sat at home, they were afraid, when it was really scary, they went out into the corridor with their grandmother, away from the windows.

Somehow all the days merged into a heap. Night, day, night… Yes, what difference does it make if I sleep dressed, I can’t wash (there is a supply of water in the bath), I can’t work (I’m afraid to turn on the computer,because I can’t turn it off quickly, and my whole life is in it), eating is also a problem, a piece doesn’t fit in my throat. The floor is low, it’s hard to really close the curtains, so after sunset, we sit in the dark and are afraid, we listen to a telethon.

At some point, our parents persuaded us to try to go to Ternopil by car. Mother went by train, couldn’t fit. And my father, me, two cats in a carrier, two old men (one just started to sit down) and well, at least some things are in the car.

It’s very scary on the road. People with guns, roadblocks. I used the navigator to see where to go. At one checkpoint, I didn’t notice that there was already a checkpoint, I was looking at my phone. A guy with a machine gun yells at me through the window to put the phone down, but I don’t understand what he wants from me, the words float past my consciousness.

10 hours on the road. For 10 hours the cats sat in the carrier, not they ate, didn’t drink, didn’t write. The eldest is still hiccupping, I hope it will pass. Old people too: they are scared, uncomfortable, there is not enough space, they want to know what is going on at all. And my legs were so swollen that it hurt just to be shod.

It’s quiet here. Yes, it happens once or twice a daily alarm, but no explosions are heard. Household chores have been sorted out this way and that, but it suddenly eats a lot of energy. Maybe it’s small things, but there are a lot of these little things. Go to the bazaar for food and bring as much as I can deliver (and at home, I ordered delivery once a month and scored the refrigerator, so it’s full and stayed in Kyiv). To buy all sorts of household trifles, which are not available in such a rented apartment, which was allowed with cats and elderly dementors. Wash the dishes, wash and somehow dry the laundry. To feed the elderly (at home they coped themselves if there was ready-made food, but here they can’t). So my hands don’t get to work yet, and it’s hard to concentrate. I was going to write this text for several days.

I still have an aquarium with fish at home. I put a car feeder and I hope that they will wait for me. Remained plants on the window. The seedlings remained in peat tablets. Remained full a freezer of delicious food. Yes, and just a house in which the walls help. I read the posts in the local group and hope that the house will survive. I’m ashamed that I left. That I couldn’t stand it. Others can somehow.

It is also very hard that many whom I considered friends and knew sane have gone mad. The brightest of all is a friend who, in response to my “I want this war not to happen,” said “so you want me and my loved ones to burn under atomic bombs.” And it looks like he really believes it! I’m not I know how to deal with all this, it just hurts a lot.

And also very It’s hard that the fighting is going on where my forest, my swamp, I’ve been there for many years I collected mushrooms and herbs, and now they are poisoning and trampling my land.
Separately, it’s hard that there is no one to talk about it — against the background of everything else, it seems like a trifle. But it hurts me.

I really hope that the war will end and I will be able to return home. And that my house will wait for me.