Diaries of the war in Ukraine - Survivors guilt

My days blur into one.

Somehow I manage to remember it’s Monday and show up for my weekly client call.

Somehow I manage to work.

Every day it’s the same routine, glued to the phone, following every single town, every single village, checking in with friends and family.?

The number of killed civilians is growing every day. Every day new bombings and new shootings.?

Every day new horror stories. So disgustingly gruesome that I can’t bring myself to write them anymore.

I file them away somewhere in my psyche marked with ‘to deal with one day’.

I watch Ukrainian TV channels, desperate to understand what is happening and where.

Mariupol is still cut off. Since the 1st March, there is no water, heating or power in the city. Occasionally there are videos from the soldiers who are defending it.?

They are tired, desperately needing help. They see what is happening in the city every day.?

Over 2000 civilians are dead. Those are the figures we can get hold of. There are people in their own homes and basements who are impossible to get hold of.

I think those figures are a lot higher.

As I am writing this, I have the heating on and a cup of coffee is warming my throat. A Yankee candle is flickering and my favourite music is playing to help me write.?

All things I like and take for granted.?

While in Mariupol a woman who gave birth to a baby girl is sitting in a basement somewhere. Freezing, with no food or water. For days.

I think and pray for her every day. I hope she and her baby girl will make it. She is a beauty blogger in Mariupol.

She was on every paper’s front page on Wednesday, the girl wrapped in a duvet.?

Russia said the bombing of the maternity ward was staged. They said that Ukrainian neo-nazis threw out all the women and children and the building was a military base.?

So the Russian scum bombed it. And according to them, the Ukrainian army used a famous beauty blogger to pose as a victim allegedly. She wasn’t injured, it was all make-up - they say.

I started following her on Insta but there haven’t been any new updates. I hope she is ok.

The other girl you saw, being carried out of on the stretcher, didn’t make it. And neither did her unborn child.?

It makes me sick to the core. The whole world is reporting the same story?but according to Russia, it’s fake.

These days I spend less time talking on the phone. People are tired, they don’t want to talk anymore.?

They wake up and do what they have to do.

A friend of mine drives 200km every day to Kharkiv to rescue people who lost their homes and livelihoods. It’s his daily routine now.?

He wears a helmet and a bulletproof jacket till he goes to bed. Every day his life is on the line.

He hasn’t got any energy to talk to me. He doesn’t tell me stories anymore, he can’t even tell his wife half of it.?

‘After this is over I will tell you everything’ - he promises.

As I hear their voices, I am eternally grateful they are all alive and safe. I don’t know that I would get to hear their voices the following day.

And that is beyond scary.?

Sometimes in the middle of the day, I read yet another story of the brutality of war and I can’t believe this is really happening.?

In 2022. While the whole world is watching. Reading news from a cosy coffee shop and then get on with its life.?

While my friends and family are in grave danger, we get to live our cosy lives.?

For the first time in my life, I understand survivor's guilt. It’s eating at you, debilitating and destroying your ability to live and function.

But I can’t let it kill me, I have to keep living. For every single Ukrainian that doesn’t get to live anymore.

Their stories have to be told and it’s my job to write them.

The new history is writing itself as we speak and I am one of the writers.