“I’m just trying to figure out how to function in this chaos.”

February 23, 2022, was a very calm and ordinary day. After school, I went for a walk with my friend. We were walking down the street when we saw military vehicles. We waved our hands at them, but the soldiers inside sat with stone faces. We were upset and didn’t understand why they were so indifferent to us.

That night, I lay in bed with an incomprehensible anxiety in my heart and for a long time I could not fall asleep. In the morning I woke up because of loud explosions. And then my mother said the most terrible words: “The war has begun’’. After realizing my mothers words, my life went to total chaos.

I found myself in a complete chaos from which I could not get out. It was noisy outside, sometimes everything was quiet. It was disturbing every second, whether I was in the basement or lying in bed.

On the second day, we decided to buy groceries. My dad and I went to the store near our house. When we entered, it was empty, completely empty. There was no food at all. The only things left on the shelves were school notebooks and various holiday cards. It looked scary, I had never seen anything like it in real life, only in apocalypse movies. We had to leave that store and go one further away. There, we were able to find at least some products and there were not many of them, but enough for us for the time being. We didn’t have much of an appetite anyway due to stress.

Because there were constant air raid sirens, we could almost never be at home, but instead always sat in the basement. It was very terrifying, and during that time I saw my mother cry for the first time. It was very painful to look at her in such a state.

Soon, we decided that we had to leave as quickly as possible. We were very afraid that dad might not be allowed through at the border. And even though he had a pass, at that time there was complete chaos and no one cared. The military simply took the men from the family, leaving the women with the children alone.

There was a huge line of cars at the border, it was so long that you couldn’t see the end of it. We stood in this endless line for more than a day. During that time I experienced even more fear than when the war began. On both sides of the cars there were crowds of people who had no transport. They were all exhausted. Many of them simply fell to the ground because they could no longer walk. There were many women who were trying to carry their small children who could not walk. There were also children who were walking without parents, just with a piece of paper tied to a string around their necks. On the piece of paper was a name and date of birth. People who were not indifferent to this came up and took the children and went to the border with them. I was scared and hurt to watch it, but I think it was even worse for my younger brother. Because even though he didn’t fully understand what was happening, you could see how scared he was.

We were able to leave the country and quite a lot of time has passed, but I still live with those additions, both good and bad. Chaos hasn’t gone away from me, it’s just not as strong now as it was then. No matter how much I tried to get rid of it, chaos is now always inside me. I realized that it is impossible to get rid of him, because it has become a part of my life, my history and I just need to get used to it and learn to live with it.