“After the war, I have fear that I can lose my loved ones”

  We came from Donetsk in 2014. And we moved to many towns: Berdyansk and Selydove. Then we moved to Kyiv because we had to settle down somewhere in order to have our own home. We first lived here in a rented apartment, and then in a house. Then we bought our own house and now we live in a big beautiful house. 

   I was born in Selydove, but I don’t remember anything there. I have basically lived most of my life in Donetsk. And I have a lot of warm memories about Donetsk, because my mother and I walked around there, we walked with my grandmother, went to dance classes, went to a music school and went to school in general, to a kindergarten too. 

At first I did not understand anything because my mother said, ‘Pack your things. We are going for a holiday.’ I thought we would have some rest, have a great time, as always. And then my mother said that we would not come back home.

   We took only our summer clothes, and at that time winter was approaching and we lived in a cold apartment. I thought then that maybe something serious had happened, that we could not move. Then my mother started watching a lot of news, and when I noticed that she was watching news about the war, I realized that something was wrong and something bad had happened. 

I miss some warm moments with my family here and generally do not have enough time, while in Donetsk we used to go to the park as a family very often, we walked around and went to the water park. And now, since we have moved, the situation is simply pressing, and we cannot just spend time together, take a walk somewhere and listen to someone. 

   I used to be more or less like that, I could live both in the real world and in the world of my fantasies. Now for some reason it just seems to me that everything that exists on earth is a fantasy. It is not something that is now, here, the present, not something that will remain forever and at any moment it can pass and not return. I began to think about life more often. 

After the war, I have fear that I can lose my loved ones and I will not be able to have them back.