Homeland

I was born in Donetsk city in Ukraine and lived there for forty years. It was the best time of my life. I grew up in a small and lovely family and had many good friends. We lived in the city center. My school was not far from my house. The school of music where I took piano lessons was located right in front of my house. There were two beautiful theatres, a city concert hall, cinema theatres, museums, painting halls and sports halls not far away from us. It was so interesting to spend our leisure time in these places. My friends and I were interested in music, painting, flower cultivation, and sports except for school lessons and we never were bored.

In those years our city was a large industrial center with more than a million citizens. There were a lot of coal mines, and metallurgical, chemical and machinery plants. But at the same time, a great number of public gardens, beautiful boulevards, and flowers on almost all city streets gave the second name of Donetsk - the “City of a million roses”. Donetsk had seven Universities, many colleges, and high schools with humanitarian and technical biases.

I got married in Donetsk and gave birth to two beautiful daughters I raised with my husband. I could say a lot of warm words about my city, which is under war right now.

But this time dramatic changes with huge human losses and numerous destructions are taking place in my city as in all of Ukraine because of terrible Russia’s military invasion. I look with heavy hurt at what is happening there, the more so that my brother with his family and some of our friends continue staying in the city.

It’s not easy for me to come to terms with this, but practically nothing left from the past life in my homeland.