Iryna (Teacher), Kyiv Oblast, 02.03.2022

For the first time in 28 years I am scared. It's getting harder to hold back tears. It seems that they, like air, seep through all the cracks and swell on the lashes. I am not afraid for myself, I am afraid for the children. Small, innocent people who are drawing tanks on their hands. And last year they were painting flowers, patterns, and symbols of pirates.

A tank on the hand of a little girl with two tails and giant black eyes - a terrible thing that can neither be forgotten nor forgiven. And she looks 6-7 years old. To the question: 'Who is your favourite hero?' the children no longer answer 'Batman' or 'Naruto.' They doubt a lot, sometimes they talk about the 'Ghost of Kiev'. He is a superhero. He protects them.

It's scary to talk to children as too many topics can be traumatic. But they tell themselves about friends and loved ones who are at home, about meat that costs 450 hryvnias now. That the shops are empty, that the school is destroyed. But we have to hold on. You can't show that you're in pain too. I am an adult and therefore strong.

Yesterday, while watching a video, there was a loud bang next to me. I could barely hold onto the thermos with tea in my hands. But the children are calm. They just looked at each other. The coolest kid asked to rewind the video, because he did not hear the hero's phrase. And these children are younger than me. But the work is addictive. We analyse the characters, the plot, talk about bullying and the problems highlighted in the video, and draw parallels. It's easier that the voice has no sound, the dialogue drags on. Only notifications on the phone are distracting.

Never mind the news and air raid sirens ... You are waiting for messages from friends and relatives. It's scary to receive notifications from a Telegram channel that covers events in your hometown. Yesterday our soldiers broke up a column near our hometown. The garden where I have been picking strawberries and wild raspberries all my life, is probably levelled to the ground. The brightest memories of summer have disappeared. Today one column of soldiers has already passed through the village, another is approaching. The Russian occupiers are destroying all living things like locusts. Even when the civilians were not physically touched, they were destroyed morally: there are no places left that are associated with something warm and pleasant, the gardens where green onions were to grow and where big strawberries grew that smelled of earth and cold dew and had a sweet juicy summer flavour, all this will also be gone, because all the solid black mash is dusted with earth. And there will be no more velvet of winter wheat. After all, there is no field anymore.

But the most unbearable thing is waiting for my mother to call. Three days ago, these Moscow orcs cut off the electric poles. Several villages are left without electricity and there are no wells. They have dried up. Almost everyone has wells that will not produce a single drop of water without electricity. Freezers (do not work), where home-made meat, strawberries and cucumbers were stored ... Everything that we have grown.

My mother's and grandmother's work will be thrown in the compost bin. Months of work will just rot. If the shooter had raised at least one piglet, or at least a chicken, if he had run to sprinkle beetles on tomatoes after work, he would probably have defended those pillars himself. But nevermind. For household needs, we take water from the pond, and a little more water is left to drink. In 21st century Ukraine, in Chernihiv region every drop of drinking water is worth its weight in gold. I hope that those who started the war will feel the same thirst as the Ukrainian people do.

I talk to my mother for a minute or two a day. We save the battery on the power bank. It is the only source of energy. But not eternal. Yes, there are generators in the village. People share what they have, but generators are not eternal.Welcome to the Stone Age, without light and water but with spoiled food.

You know, now is the time when both your own grief and the grief of others hurts, when you are proud of everyone, because together we make sure that the morning catches us alive. Hands are shaking when you are waiting for a call or a message. Now we live in times when thousands of hearts merge into one beat, which is many times louder than all the sounds of the world, when millions of souls pray that tomorrow will be safe and quiet, that death will not touch either relatives or friends, or those who defend the earth, or those who at the first siren rise to protect the sky, when you ask to bless doctors, volunteers, rescuers … Now is the time when you fall asleep under the shots with a prayer on your lips and jump from the SMS 'We are alive. It seems to be quiet now.'

Now is the time when the slogan 'Ukraine above all' is not a beautiful phrase, but the meaning of life of millions.