We don’t sleep on the floor anymore

My name is Svitlana, I’m almost 30, and for 23 nights now my mom and I have been sleeping in the basement of a neighbor’s building. I was born and raised in Russian-speaking Mykolaiv, in a family where nobody ever spoke Ukrainian. I lived quite happily until Russia attacked my country.

The first two nights in the basement, we slept on the floor, because there were so many of us. It was stuffy, dusty, and unbearably frightening. It’s hard to convey the terror you feel when you’re running down a dark street to the sound of sirens and explosions.

With us was a baby girl who’d just turned six months old, with her mom and older brother, age three — he walked in circles, going up to everyone, wanting someone to play with him. Five-year-old Masha couldn’t understand why she wasn’t allowed to run and laugh loudly.

With us were teenagers who, instead of studying in school, had learned to distinguish the sounds of different types of weapons our disrespected neighbor uses to bomb us.

One night, my friends' family was with us, with their four-year-old daughter. That day there was heavy shelling from Grads and Smerches. The little one flinched at every explosion. I distracted her with stories about a magical unicorn that grants any wish. When the lights went out or flickered, she’d start crying, and we couldn’t calm her, because explosions and darkness are not what a child should see and hear.

Pensioners, who have a particularly hard time enduring all of this. At every explosion, Lena (that’s what she asked to be called — not “Grandma Lena”) jumps up and tries to determine how close the “liberating combat rocket” landed.

Last spring, her daughter brought her and her husband to Mykolaiv from Crimea. They hadn’t supported the annexation of the peninsula. Their house, where multiple generations of the family had grown up, was destroyed for the construction of the Kerch Bridge, but only recently had they been able to leave and start building a new life. But we see what Russia does with this new life — everything it touches is destroyed. Russia took one home from them and is trying to destroy the second.

Nearly all city residents have already left for calmer regions of Ukraine or other countries. Mom and I, along with some neighbors, continue going down to the basement at curfew (that’s seven in the evening) or when the sirens sound. When the alarm goes off, we have 5 to 10 minutes to put on our outerwear, our shoes, and run quickly — under the droning, with hearts pounding from fear — to the shelter. When we return to our apartments, we don’t change into house clothes, so we can be ready as fast as possible for the next threat.

We no longer sleep on the floor. We brought an old folding cot, nearly all our blankets, and even pillows. We laid old carpets on the floor so we wouldn’t choke on dust kicked up by walking, and stocked water and food in case we can’t leave the shelter for a long time.

When these orcs bomb, even in relative safety, a sticky fear grips you, filling every cell of your body — fear for your loved ones, and hatred toward everyone doing this, everyone who stays silent and supports this war. When silence comes, we frantically write and call everyone close to make sure they’re okay and this time everyone is alive, but you understand that next time anything could happen.

Even when the night is relatively quiet, you wake from phantom explosions or anxiety. If you managed to sleep three hours straight, that’s lucky. A week ago, shelling knocked out power and communications. The most terrifying hours — when you have no idea whether your friends and family are alive. In many places in the region, there’s been no electricity, water, or heat for weeks, and you can’t find out if your loved ones are alive.

Despite all the horrors, we’ve come together. We’ve organized a schedule for basement life, we have a password for entry, everyone supports each other. I know this hell will end. We’ll once again fall asleep in our beds with our loved ones beside us, we’ll be able to take off our dusty clothes. But this basement will forever remain in our memory as the place where we spent many nights, fearing for our lives and praying for all of us.