Just read this | Imamother

sequoia

Wed, Aug 17 2022, 3:34 pm

“I am 38 and a widow. My husband died in the war. Yes, at war, in the 21st century, in the center of Europe. And I can no longer be anyone but that.

I am 38 and a widow. I don't feel like myself anymore. My body does not fully belong to me. I either don't eat or eat a lot. The taste of food is lean and not pronounced. Periodically, I catch myself thinking that I am eating what my husband loved.
I am "heavy" and "woolly", like a clumsy toy stuffed with straw. It is difficult for me to move my legs, sometimes I cannot hold something in my hands. Even the phone feels too heavy. I carry my son in my arms, I carry a backpack with things, I try to feel at least something that presses me to the ground. And I feel really pressed by the concrete slabs, so that I could hardly breathe. These two states change several times a day.

I am a widow, I am still young. But I don't feel beautiful anymore. I can no longer agree with myself about my external flaws, now I only see them. I can't be beautiful anymore. Not because I don't want to. I don't have the strength for it. I'm not attractive anymore. I am nothing anymore. Like a torn and faded pumpkin left alone in the field. Maybe I'm not completely alone, because there are enough torn pumpkins in the field, I'm not the only one who will never hug my husband again. It's just that we are not that good and now we can offer nothing but our grief to the world.

I am 38 and a widow. My son is growing up so fast and his dad doesn't see it anymore. He is growing and I don't have enough resources to give him as much attention as he needs now. I cursed. I grew up. I stopped. I was lost. I was petrified.
People clap me on the shoulder, say words of support and gratitude. Time is running out. There are fewer people and in the end I am alone in a dark, empty apartment where my beloved still lives. This is life. For someone, but not for me. Everyone goes to their families, and I no longer have mine

I am 38 and a widow. Sometimes I forget that he died and I live the way I lived before, in calm worries. But reality still insists. It will never be the same again. No one will ever take away my grief, sadness, insecurity, bitterness, anger. I will have to live and deal with them myself.

I will never forget who did it. Who stole my dreams, gutted my happiness, shot my life.

I am a widow, I am 38, and the only thing I really want now is for the bullets of our soldiers to reach the bodies of the enemy, for the artillery to hit even more precisely, for everyone in the formation to destroy the enemy without pity and pain, without compassion and remorse, without looking at the international impotent organizations and words of situational partners. I want such a collective hodgepodge of nations like russia to no longer exist. And no one will do it except you. Yes, at the cost of our own lives, yes, at the cost of our widowhood, yes, at the cost of the postponed happy future of our children. We will restore everything after victory, we will restore ourselves. We will grow and love our nation again. As our mothers and grandmothers did for centuries before us.
Maybe in that distant dreamed future, we, torn and faded pumpkins, will want to live a little, find ourselves and our new meanings.

ZSU, only you bring this day closer for us.”

I don’t share her optimism. Where there are nukes, soldiers are irrelevant. In the end, nukes decide everything — who has them and who doesn’t.

But I don’t say it. I say nothing.