Feeling the world sharply

Leaving Menae...

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In Darnytskyi district, a 9-story residential building collapsed - destruction from the 1st to the 6th floor.

In Pecherskyi district, hits were recorded in the courtyards of the residential complex "French Quarter", "Fountain Boulevard" and Trinity. Dozens of cars were destroyed and damaged, a private clinic was destroyed.

In Desnyanskyi district, an apartment building was damaged, people may be under the rubble.

In Shevchenkivskyi district, residential buildings and a medical institution were damaged. Doctors were injured, one of the paramedics is in extremely serious condition.

More than 20 residential buildings in the capital have been damaged, and rescue operations are ongoing at 15 locations.

In the Darnytskyi district, rescuers have rescued 17 people, seven of whom were freed from the rubble. At the same time, a search is underway for people who may be trapped under the rubble.

Emergency and rescue operations continue.

The death toll has risen to 30.

The fate of the 10 people who have not been contacted remains unknown.

You know, I don't accept the idea of a "legitimate war target". THEY HAVE FUCKING ATTACKED US BECAUSE WE'RE A SEPARATE COUNTRY. That's the true reason! They want all of our country, with us dead. They fucking have one of the largest territory on planet Earth and all they operate by is endless greed. NO ONE AND NOTHING about what's within our borders is a legitimate war target!!! If they attack our military, they attack our people. Fuck this shit about "legitimate". This war is ABSOLUTELY black and white. They attack, we defend. We are the ukrainian nation, we are one, our military is our people.

Still. Look at the situation: our military attacks whatever would stop them from advancing into our land and attacking us, dealing as little damage to their civilians (because our military respects as much human rights as possible despite that we don't have to; I can't imagine what strength of will our soldiers have to capture the invaders and treat them with respect for war prisoner rights). They shoot at residential houses at night to kill. Billions of USD are spent on murder.

What excuse they use about why this is happening? Compassion fatigue? Because, you know, they can allow it, it's not them getting air raids every night, it's not them having to flee their homes with a backpack of possession, it's not them having to integrate in a new environment. They can allow themselves to get fatigued of being human. Not Ukrainians though.

As a refugee, I will be forever thankful for the way me and my mom were treated when we fled to the other country. How helpful, empathetic, and caring people were around us. How we were hugged by a complete stranger in a store, when we asked for help in finding baking soda, and that grandma teared up when we answered on her question where we came from.

But then it started to change, not a half year in a full scale invasion. A man at the hairdresser's, who started aggressively commenting about Ukrainians in his country. An ER doctor who told my 80 y.o. grandpa he had to learn the language by now. Harassment at work, because I'm Ukrainian, and I supposedly "took the work place" of a job that had an opening for half a year, pays shitty wage and has no prospect. Hearing "go home" time and time again, even though I don't have a home anymore, but not like I can explain it to a random bully on the street, who heard me speaking with my mom. The vet we took our kitty to, who asked when we were planning to go home, because the war will be over soon, with a nasty smirk. A constant berating on the internet, of people bemoaning us having too many benefits, even though we had barely anything at all - no living accommodation, no food help, just medical care for my mom who is disabled, and me one time, when I literally went blind from stress.

I could go to Ukraine, but where would I live? All of the few relatives I have there - grandma and cousins - all live in a rented places. And subject my mom to a life under constant air raids, when she almost had a heart attack when we lived in Orikhiv under shelling? No, thank you. I would rather be a nobody in a foreign country that always dismisses me, makes my existence harder day by day, but have a living, somewhat healthy mother.

And I know, I'm safe in another country, not in a constant peril of being killed by a shahed or a ballistic missile, and it's much worse for those who stayed in Ukraine, surviving the horrors of war every day, having to continue to exist even when their cities are in smoke after the recent attack. I know some Ukrainians will say "well, you could've just stayed", and maybe they would've been right. Perhaps it would've been better to be buried under the ruins of my home, than being torn from it. I would've gladly stayed, if it wasn't for the evacuation order or my mom's health, trust me.

Secondly, I've been a refugee for some time, and I can relate.

Some part of the people of the countries that have accepted our refugees live in a dome of safety in their minds. They have no idea what we're literally facing. To them, it's an image on TV and a bunch of foreigners with slightly different mentality suddenly arriving at their lives and their streets and their jobs.

Let me break it down for you, Tumblr: it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to understand what it's like being under a shelling unless you've lived through it. I mean, up to 24.02.2022 I was living my normal life - going to work, having hobbies, meeting people dear to me, and basically living a pretty ordinary life. I'd known what my next few months would look like, what my career would look like within a year, I had certain hopes and plans.

On 24.02.2022 I was walking my district looking at my neighborhood with a completely shocking thought of what balcony would protect me as an improvised cover in case something would throw bombs at my district. Looking at the sky in horror. The sky itself wasn't feeling like safe anymore.

On the evening of 24.02.2022 I was crying my heart out over a world that suddenly ceased to exist: a predictable world, a relatively safe world, a world I used to understand and believe in.

Within days I've decided that to preserve my work I had to move. Without a plan, without knowledge. Just move. Pack my entire life in two bags and leave.

I've torn myself out of the ruins of the life I knew to end up a nameless lost person in a scary world that barely gives a damn about whether I'd have a place to sleep for the night.

Next thing to mention: work. See, when refugees arrive, they're usually desperate to find any job and any living place. Mind you, their ordinary life has already suffered: they've lost jobs, or homes, or had to leave their own homes to rent something else (which makes living somewhere more expensive), and they're definitely separated from most of their social environment - family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues, people speaking the same language, people having the same experience and history as part of a nation. Oftentimes refugee life is starting EVERYTHING from scratch with a couple of bags filled with strictly necessary possessions. Buying a frying pan and a couple of plates just to, you know, eat something. A towel, a pillow, a mop. I remember freezing in the middle of the night in one of the rented homes because I didn't have a blanket. I DIDN'T HAVE A FRIGGIN BLANKET. Buying some cheapest pants and jacket. Buying summer footwear because you've left your home with only one pair of footwear, a winter one. Expenses, expenses, expenses. Countless expenses. God forbid you get ill and the country you ended up in doesn't provide any basic state-funded medical insurance.

That's why refugee may agree to jobs locals wouldn't agree. It's easy to manipulate a foreigner to believe that the money they'd earn would be enough to live a proper life while refugees don't know the local life yet and don't have the privilege of having families and friends around to help in case of trouble. What does it mean? It means that employers set wages anyone could barely survive with, and if the market is full of people looking for a job locals wouldn't do, thus involuntarily creating a high demand for low-waged jobs, it leads to two things: first, employers think they can get away with that, minimum wages and stuff. Second, the market becomes oversaturated with workers, and wages go down even more. A job market is a market, and anyone who knows how a market economy works, knows that demand and supply cross at a certain point.

It's easy to think that if refugees wouldn't arrive, the job market wouldn't be turbulent. Well, who's to blame in that turbulence happening? NOT the people who have discarded all that was their lives to walk the incredibly difficult path of starting from scratch in a country they maybe don't even know the language of (BECAUSE MIGRATING TO THAT COUNTRY WAS NEVER A PLAN!!!). I've been there. It's a path that leaves your mind in shreds. People who make such a drastic change to their lives do it out of desperation! Not because they want to suddenly drop their life level to zero!

Along with that, at applying to any job in a foreign country, refugees face language barrier, mentality difference, superstitions (fueled by ruzzia, by the way), qualifications deterioration, etc. Many people used to have jobs that can't be performed well in a foreign country: sellers (language barrier), lawyers (completely different legislation), doctors (need to prove their qualifications or even receive new ones), accountants (very different tax system), CEOs and managerial staff (language barrier + their level of expertise might not be recognized in a foreign country). Some people will learn and receive qualifications. But a big part of people wouldn't be able to perform jobs they used to perform, because, one, the market wouldn't accommodate the increased number of specialists of that profession, and, secondly, employers would prefer locals for many reasons (including the organizational and legal difficulty of employing a foreigner).

Don't get me wrong, I've met some amazing, caring people out there. I'll always remember everyone who's been kind to me and patient with the entire situation. I'll always remember fondly everyone who's helped, who supported me or any other Ukrainian, who just were not hostile. But I've also seen another side of a refugee life. Along with that life itself being difficult, hearing "go home" is painful. What if the person hearing "go home" has no home to speak of because ruzzia has razed it to the ground? What if their home is now under ruzzian occupation and going back there and staying there is simply unsafe and is barely possible? What if that person has been violated by the invaders back at home? What if that person has PTSD and cannot even visit home due to all the stress they've experienced at home?

It's easy to send people home when the shit is going on only on the TV screen. Those people who wish us to go home are tired of hearing those news and experiencing the effects of world economic, social, and political situations shifting. Well, how can I help them while standing in my bathroom at 3 AM after having been woken up by a very loud explosion, with my heart pounding and my stomach willing to throw up because my body is thinking we're gonna die and is pushing adrenaline through my veins and is shutting down the digestion as a non-critical system? How can I help them while I'm riding past a residential house where a part of the house has been destroyed in the middle of the night (NINE FLOORS RAZED TO THE GROUND) with 24 people killed instantly, and I'm feeling like I'd burst into tears because those were ordinary people and ordinary apartments and now people are dead, and those who survived that attack are basically homeless now???

A master post of Thomas Romain’s art tutorials.

There’s not enough space to post all of them, SO here’s links to everything he has posted (on twitter) so far : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. 

Okay. Wear a mask in public spaces, then. Make sure people with chronic illnesses can go to the pharmacy and grocery store with less risk to their health because they're at higher risk from communicable illnesses like covid, flu, and RSV. Prevent more viral-triggered cases of POTS, ME/CFS, MS, Alzheimer's, and more by lessening the spread of viral disease.