II

April 8

Three weeks pass by until I’m able to write again. Soaking in all the experiences and memories of the past weeks I don’t have many words anymore … I thought this would be a journal about everything we see and hear during our time as volunteers but there is much silence at the residence where we live. We sit and watch the sky as planes make their turns near the border. We look into the distance and hear bombs shattering in our head. We look into each other’s eyes without saying a word. We touch each other to comfort each other.

We smoke we drink we evacuate people we see shattered cars numb faces empty places. People waiting for signs of life. Don’t speak— we don’t need to speak as we ride in the car together, not knowing how to act as we don’t speak the same language, as we don’t speak. We listen to music as we hear voice calls to their husbands and sons left behind, in the basements, where they hide from the war. Where they need to step out to fight the war.

How am I supposed to live — a life story written by someone else. An old self with old friends and a past life. It hurts to think about destruction, about people losing their lives, about friends risking their lives out of a dedication to love. Love for a country but moreover love for their friends, families, pets, memories and hope. War is terrible.

A tear runs down my pale cheek. I think about grief and I find myself living in a zone without time away from my family and friends, close to the border of Ukraine helping to end this war. A war that is more than an attack on Ukraine. It is killing of innocent people, disturbance of peace and an attack on us all. Why? Because I thought— as a little child — that one day there will be a world without war. This war is not the only war, it’s not the first one near by where we live and it’s not the only one to care about— but it is one too many. I shed a tear and start hysterically crying for all the lives lost, for all that is lost forever.

April 11

In my Munich apartment

How does it feel to live in safety and peace?

How does it feel to live without war, away from war, next to war in a room on the second floor in a city with lots of lights knowing there will be no attack. Being sure there will be no attack, no bomb flying into the room. At night when the sun has already set and the sky glimmers in blue and there is a little crescent shaped moon and the city has become silent yet a couple of sounds bursting the tranquility like children laughing in the street before needing to go to bed and a couple of cars slowly driving around the corner. How does it feel to be safe, to be safely tucked in at bed looking into a darkish yet light filled room where the shadows of the city mingle around.