I live with my parents. We have two children, my nephew and my son. My son is four months older than my nephew. It so happened that my sister got married, but why should Sasha leave his home where he grew up, where he was born? So, she comes for visits and he lives with us.
It is difficult for everyone now, and even more so when you have children. Now they go to school, to the first form. I do not have a job. I get a child care allowance for Zhenya as a single mother. My parents are not retirees. My dad is 60 years old and my mom is 55. We keep a cow and have a vegetable garden. So, we live from this, but that is not enough. My kid asks to buy something, but I can’t. At least he understands that there is no money for that. They want it as they are kids. Either a toy, or some juice. It is the first form of school and school stationery was worth 700 hryvnias! But this is not counting clothes and shoes. Shoes may cost some 300 hryvnias, a suit is about 800 hryvnias and a shirt is 250 hryvnias. It's hard to live, very hard.
Coal is not delivered to our place. Firewood is not delivered either, nothing is delivered to us. People cannot even come to visit us. Why? Because of the checkpoints. You cannot go to the nearest wood line because it is mined all over. Every day we think something out to have some means to live from one loaf of bread to another.
It is scary. When there is shelling, our house is shaking. We lie on the couch all together. When the machine guns shoot, we hear it too. I am still afraid every time it starts. I am afraid for the kids.
When this war began, the field nearby was on fire and we heard the shelling. There was such a strong shelling that we had dinging in our ears. Our cellar is in bad shape and we have nowhere to hide. We sat in a circle all together – what will be, will be. What can we do? We sat down and my son Zhenya said: ‘Mom, if they kill us, will we be found and buried?’ Is this normal? He was four years old then when it all started. And what kind of emotional, mental state can they have? This is awful, just awful! This is how we live, as if sitting on a powder keg.
I hope to see the children healthy, most importantly. And hope this war will be over. If there wasn’t this war everything would be different. I am thankful to my parents. If not for my parents, I don’t know how I would have survived.
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