nudity.slip

Selfportraits with

Added 2025-05-29 15:00:08 +0000 UTC

I recently returned from a three-week trip to Kyiv — a very special one. I had been imagining it for months: walking around the city, hugging my parents, smelling the lilacs early in the morning at the botanical garden, drinking coffee with friends, listening to birds, hearing my native language all around me, and of course — eating delicious food.

Spoiler: I actually did all of that :) But…

Something shifted this time. For the first time since the full-scale war began, I truly felt fear. Not the kind that lives in your stomach, but real emotional fear. The fear of not waking up. The fear of dying. The fear for my own life — and then, for Gary’s.

Before this trip, I didn’t know the difference between a drone and a missile, a Shahed and a Kalibr, a Kinzhal, a MiG or a TU aircraft. I had to learn. And I finally understood the saying: “The less you know, the better you sleep.”

The last two nights in Kyiv were especially hard. Six hours each night of air raid alerts, drone and ballistic missile threats. You could hear the air defense systems working right above us, the explosions… and your own heartbeat.

We slept on the floor in the bathroom — the only place in the apartment that felt somewhat safe. I scolded myself for coming, for convincing Gary to join me, for being so reckless with my desires.

But in the middle of that fear, something else happened — I felt. I really felt something. It wasn’t just physical discomfort, it was an emotion. And that made me feel… alive.

Strangely, it brought me joy — not the fear itself, but the fact that I could feel it emotionally. Those of you who know me, know how long I’ve struggled with sensing my emotions — especially the darker ones.

This trip was deeply emotional and full of contrasts. And in those last chaotic days, I found myself dreaming of leaving, even thinking: “I don’t want to come back here again.”

Now I’m in Warsaw — safe, with friends. But still, every night around midnight (when things usually escalate in Ukraine), I feel unease in my body. I still react to loud noises — not with panic, but with awareness. I register every sound that might resemble an explosion, a siren, or a gunshot.

I wonder how long it’ll stay with me.