From: Ira Kapitonova (Day 773):
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Psalm 23:4
I got to spend a day out with my sister today. As we were walking down a certain part of the city, we realized we hadn’t been there since 2019. Covid at first, and then the full-scale war kept us close to where we live as that’s where we felt the safest.
While enjoying ourselves, I caught myself getting startled by my phone buzzing as it could mean an air raid (thankfully, it wasn’t). I was also making mental notes of underground passages we walked by while strolling. I wanted to know where we could take shelter if needed, and I finally relaxed when we reached a place with an underground parking lot and a metro station nearby.
I know that all people have different levels of anxiety, but I kept thinking about the people in Kharkiv. If I am so jumpy in Kyiv, which is a mostly safe place, how do those who are bombed a few times a day feel?
Tonight, I saw a picture of a destroyed bridge in Kupiansk, Kharkiv region. A street artist, Gamlet Zinkivskyi, wrote on it, “Alive, Concussed, Happy.” I thought that these words were a good description of most Ukrainians. We may not be literally concussed, but we all are definitely pretty shaken.
Voice of Ukraine 