From the frontlines, AFU soldier Iryna Polyn asks everyone to live their lives joyfully and not put life on pause, because, at the front, it’s a rare treat to simply look at the sun, stars, and sky through gaps in the roof.
LIFE. This place is like hell. A place of dirt, blood, heroism and fear. There is no connectivity, no electricity here. Sleep comes in fits on bare concrete or on the ground. You don’t take off your boots, vest and helmet for days. Drinking water is a luxury.
A change of clothes has become a distant luxury, because the place where you had all of your clothes and documents is long gone.
It’s a rare treat to gaze at the sun, stars, sky, accessible only through the gaps in the tarp covering.
This is a place where they want to kill you twenty-four hours a day. A place that is shelled and attacked by artillery and air bombs daily, a place where helicopters fly around as if they were at home. This is not a place for people. It’s the price of the luxury of freedom.
And it’s from this place that I feel that I have the right to say to you: Live.
Live today and right now. Celebrate your children’s birthdays, smile, play with them, enjoy lavender lattes and and cooking on fire, plant flowers, watch movies, kiss and make love to one another, love your children (and ours too, if possible, as we’re a little busy and cannot love them directly at the moment).
Do not put your life on pause. Don’t burn yourself out with news and endless analysts. Stop draining your soul through weeping: tears have never won anyone their freedom.
LIVE. Live for yourself. And live for us.
