The electricity not being cut off during a rolling blackout can trigger a panic attack.
Getting into a lift is a game of Ukrainian roulette: will it get stuck today or tomorrow?
A notice in the communal stairwell reads: “Use a toilet before using the lift.”
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Generators roar in front of every little store and café like chained-up dogs. A man is charging his iPhone – the latest make – from a petrol-powered generator.
A colleague serving in the military invites me to join him for a break from my stressful existence in Kyiv: “I can guarantee 24/7 power supply and no military enlistment offices in sight.”
Another friend’s invitation to visit Odesa this summer is similarly encouraging: “I know a beach that’s clear of mines.”
A friend who just got back to Kyiv from the combat zone complains about the tricks his mind plays on him: “I used to spot pretty girls whenever I was out. Now I mostly notice these beefy young guys covered in tattoos. Where are they all coming from? A heroic people. Three hundred Spartans, for f**k’s sake.”
A different friend who’s served in the army for the past two years says he decided to read something more intellectual than military manuals. He read in an Ukrainska Pravda column: “People inevitably try to find clarity amid uncertainty, to imbue meaningless things with meaning, to couch mundane occurrences in existential concerns, and to mistakenly come up with overly complicated solutions to simple issues.” He had to read it three times before he realised he kept seeing “shower issues” instead of “simple issues”.
Young kids are playing outside, tossing coins to decide who gets to be “our guys”, who will be a “son of a bitch” [i.e. a Russian soldier], and who will be a “zhdun” [someone who waits – a word used in Ukraine to denote Ukrainians who eagerly await the arrival of Russian forces and want the territories where they live to be controlled by Russia or become part of Russia – ed.].
News about the 2030 Winter Olympics reads like science fiction.
I could go on listing these telltale features of our new reality ad infinitum. We all share those, but each of us also has our own. Just as each of us experiences the war differently.
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What is our “new normal”? Do we really have to get used to it?
How do we regain our sense of self when habitual patterns and behaviours no longer apply?
Why is it important to create new routines…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Ukrainska Pravda…