It’s just another year
And it’s not over till it’s over
After weeks upon weeks of foggy gloom, real winter graced Ukraine on Christmas day, blanketing the still-green grass with ice crystals. It was a day in between big missile/drone attacks – the December 23rd attack on the Western regions of Ukraine forcing reduced capacities of two nuclear power plants – and the December 27th attack against Kyiv, leaving nearly half of the capital’s residents with no electricity, and/or heating, and/or water.
In the tiny village where I spent Christmas, the day was quiet, sunny, and crisp, bright lights reflecting from grass, making me forget the troubles of the passing year, helping me arrive at this rare uncomplicated moment.
2025 was tough, and I don’t believe that New Year’s magic can override the very real possibility that 2026 might be tougher. Everything points to a year of continued war, austerity, and russian attempts to further demoralize, intimidate, and kill Ukrainians. Nothing new - except, perhaps, new challenges to be faced.
When looking into this new year, the only thing I say to death, borrowing the language of Arya Stark, is ‘not today’. Or, let’s visualize my attitude to the impending troubles of 2026 through a more recent cultural reference – Max flipping a ‘fuck you’ to the biggest villain of ‘Stranger Things’.
I don’t want my cautious realism to be the only prophecy for 2026, so I will also give way to a bit of CBT-like self-work on my beliefs. Beliefs shape attention. Attention shapes perceived reality. With that, I want to take responsibility for seeing, noticing, creating, and supporting the good stuff of life. I want to keep pursuing the energy-giving experiences within and outside the realm of my personal boundaries and choices. I hope to keep staying alive and being alive.
In 2025, I fell and rebounded too many times – or, rather, I crawled out of unfortunate happenings – the collapse of USAID that took away my job, the collapse of a two-year relationship, the exponential increase in air attacks against Ukraine. Stubborn as I am, I found a new and better job, a new and better (albeit short-lived) relationship, a new and better shelter burritoing in a sleeping bag on the platform of Kontraktova metro station.
I’d say I’m somehow ending 2025 in a better shape than I ended 2024. Because whenever I had the freedom and privilege to make my own choices, I went for it. I chose to open up the goddamn dating app. I chose to send out dozens of job applications. I chose to keep taking care of myself, keep moving, reach out to friends. In time, I was lucky to find work and find love again – although, as a friend rightly pointed out (hello Diane!), folks who think they are lucky are just positive, strong, and resourceful humans. Dunno if I’m always positive, but resourceful I am for sure, I kinna have to be.
I’d say I’m also ending 2025 in a worse shape than I ended 2024. More than ever before, I gave way to apathy, just letting things wash over me, letting it slide, letting days pass without as much as a spark in my heart. Apathy served its purpose as a kind of pre-emptive grief, numbing me before the next bad thing would happen. Doomscrolling during power outages – although my phone battery would die – became a regular escape. Each new mass attack became more banal, but then new life experiences also got more bland. With each – new – blow, days fell out of shape. It took me – it takes me – conscious effort to catch any smallest spark of interest and aliveness by the tail, to tend to it, to amplify it.
I’m not that special nor am I alone in going through this experience as a civilian in the rear, and sharing this experience somehow made it all more bearable. Compared to the plight of my ancestors who went through famine and World War II, I can access incredible abundance – food on the shelves of the nearest supermarket, generators roaring outside to keep the economy going, internet allowing me to share these very scribbles, Christmas lights powered by Ecoflow portable batteries, etc., etc.
Then what more do I want? (A lot – first of all, for russia to just fuck off forever). What am I carrying forward into the new year? What am I tending to? What am I choosing to hone? Well, I keep choosing to love what I already have while I have it – the connections with my community online and offline, the home I made for myself in the apartment I’m renting in Kyiv, the opportunity to do more than just witness history from the sidelines. I don’t want russia to write the script for what comes next. To death, I keep saying ‘not today’, and I sure as hell carry forward the middle finger to Vecna/putin.
There is so much that I’m still needed for. There’s much that I still need and want to experience in life. And I am grateful to Ukraine’s Defense Forces for allowing me the privilege to keep living and working in Ukraine, experiencing and furthering Ukrainian culture, films, theatre, and our own visions, however messy and imperfect, of a nation/community with a shared aspiration for freedom and happiness.
I want to keep being that annoying burnt-out Ukrainian millennial who rises from the literal ashes of Kyiv to reach out and share what she’s got instead of disappearing. Resisting physical erasure goes hand in hand with resisting numbness. So, I am carrying forward this practice of reflecting and rage-posting on Substack with y’all – however crude my scribbles may be. If there is one promise I’m making to myself and y’all for 2026, it’s not to be stronger, or hopeful, or better. I have no new years’ resolutions. I just hope to stay alive. I just hope to be alive.
Thank you all.
Truly, thanks for being here! This is a reader-supported wartime journal. If you want to support my hustle and my life here in Kyiv - you can do so by signing up for a paid subscription via Patreon. (Substack’s own paid subscription service does not work within Ukraine, hence Patreon).
Get access to exclusive cat content. Yes, I repeat: exclusive Ukrainian cat content for my paid subscribers.
Sending you strength