Diary of War

16 March 2022

Day twenty-one

Oleksandr [Zaporizhzhia]

I’m having panic attacks. I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and immediately check my newsfeed. The artillery attacks, the sounds of sirens and tension in the city leave me grasping for the scattered bits of my mental health. 

I always fall asleep in my clothes in case of an emergency, but there is another reason—it’s ice-cold in the house. February was somewhat warm, but March went down to -7 degrees. 

I wake up at six each day. If Russian rockets don’t kill me, my own mental and physical state might.