Invasion on our Hearts and Souls
Somebody said, it takes around 21 days to adjust to traumatic events.
The hardest days are the third, the fifth and the fourteenth. Then, on twenty-first day you adjust.
Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th of February, 2022. Did we adjust?
Project completed by May,2022
I woke up at 5 am to the sound of explosion and did not know what was happening.
We waited for 18 hours outside, standing in line at the polish border, in -3C weather.
There were shell craters everywhere: between apartment buildings, in every courtyard.
I’ve made sure my house is locked and closed before leaving. I may never see it again.
There are so many ways war comes into your life. One day you wake up and read the news, and you are shocked, devastated, angry and what you feel is endless pain. At least that's what you think. The day after you think you know what pain is. And what is despair. And what is hope. And what is to worry about your close ones. But then the third day comes, and you think that you know now how it feels, when your heart is truly broken. When you see places, you knew beautiful and full of life dead now. Yet you hope, and you hate, and you feel so many new things. You learn to feel all of this. And you think now you know...
And it does not stop. It does not stop. You learn the true meanings of so many words you never truly knew before.
And it does not matter if you are in a safe (for the moment) place or right in the heart of the warzone. Warzone came to all of us and crushed right against us, and is now inside, whatever happens. This is an invasion on our hearts and souls, not only on our land, our country and our freedom.
I have asked many Ukrainians in Paris to describe their feelings just in one word. Written on any color they feel matches better their inner state and emotions. Refugees, tourists, people who had lived here for years.
Everyone who found their shelter in Europe and France after the war started.
