(essay)

This morning should have been normal. I was supposed to wake up to my alarm clock as usual. But on 24 February 2022, a different sound woke me up. It was loud and scary. It was not thunder. I knew immediately that something terrible had begun.

My heart was beating very fast. I took my phone and opened the news. There was nothing yet. But I felt it — the world was already changing.

In the school chat, someone wrote: “I’m scared. Everything is shaking. Something is flying in the sky.” Then — silence. And after that — one short message: “The war has started.”

My friend called me. She already had a plan to leave. But we didn’t. We didn’t even have an emergency bag.

I remember that day like a fog. I kept checking the news. I couldn’t call my family. The phone network didn’t work. My mom had to go to work. People were standing in long lines at ATMs. The first air alarm came two days later. We lived close to important places, but it didn’t help.

There was no bomb shelter in our building. We moved to live with my grandmother in another part of Zhytomyr. We hoped it would be safer there. But when a rocket hit a school nearby, my mother said: “Pack your things.” I didn’t want to go to Lviv, so I asked her to stay.

Now it’s been a few years, but the war is still here. We got used to the sirens, blasts, destructions. Maybe. But every explosion still scares us. I moved to Kyiv. This city lives in fear every day.

However, life goes on. In the daytime — studying, working, planing. In the evening — fear and firing. This is my new ‘normal.’ This is the life of millions of Ukrainians.