This is my first post here, and honestly, I feel a little nervous.
I haven’t written much on this platform lately. Not because I have nothing to say — quite the opposite. I just keep finding reasons not to do it. Work, travel, new hobbies. Sometimes it feels like life simply fills itself with tasks, and somewhere between them the thoughts remain unspoken.
Maybe it’s easier that way.
To just keep moving forward.
But today I happened to come across one of the recent posts in this community. The author was writing about trauma and about how some events don’t stay in the past as easily as we sometimes want to believe.
And something in that text resonated with me.
Sometimes a single random sentence is enough to open a whole stream of thoughts inside you — thoughts you haven’t spoken about out loud for a long time.
And suddenly I felt the urge to write.
Maybe just to say something.
And perhaps to be heard.
I’m from Mariupol.
It is a city in Ukraine that was destroyed after the war began and was later forcibly annexed by Russia.
When the war started, my city was surrounded. My family and I were there, and we couldn’t leave. There were no humanitarian corridors, no possibility to simply gather our things and go somewhere safe.
We just found ourselves inside events that no one could stop or predict.
This is a long story.
Perhaps one day I will tell it in full.
But if someone is curious to better understand what those days were like, there is a documentary called “20 Days in Mariupol”, based on real events. My family and I literally passed by the places where journalists were filming some of those scenes.
Later, the film received an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, and for me it was a strange feeling — to see on the screen the same places and moments that we were simply trying to survive through at the time.
There is one thing that sometimes surprises me now.
I can talk about it calmly.
Without tears.
Sometimes this even surprises other people. They seem to expect a different reaction, as if stories like this must always be accompanied by strong emotions.
And maybe once they were.
But almost four years have passed.
Four years is enough time to build a new life on the surface. To find work, to get used to another country, to meet new people, to learn new streets and new routines.
From the outside it may look as if everything has already been left in the past.
But sometimes I realize that some things do not disappear with time.
Sometimes it seems to me that people who had to leave their homes are a bit like plants that were pulled out of the ground with their roots. The old soil still clings to the roots, but the plant itself lies somewhere between places — no longer where it once grew, and not yet somewhere it can truly take root again.
From the outside everything looks normal.
Life goes on.
But sometimes it only takes something small.
An old photograph.
The smell of a familiar object.
A random text that suddenly brings you back to thoughts you haven’t spoken about for a long time.
And then you realize one simple thing.
Sometimes trauma does not stay in the past.
It simply becomes a quiet part of us.
And perhaps growing up is not always about fully letting go of the past.
Sometimes it is simply about learning to move forward while understanding that some parts of our lives will always remain within us.
Quietly.
But forever.
Thank you for reading.
Ksenia
