“It took me 6 to 7 weeks to stop feeling the war was after me like a predator.”
Vera Pyrozhkova (34) is from Odesa and is the mother of a five-year-old boy. She has a background in pharmacy and podiatry. She is now learning Romanian and English, and studying psychology.
I feel lost. Before the war I knew what my life was supposed to be like, who I was, where I had to go in the morning, what I worked or lived for, what my dreams were. The day the war started was the first day of a new stage in my life, I was given an opportunity to start a new job, for which I had trained and studied. I remember how we were leaving home, how we got there, how I was dreaming on the way of what was to come, while the fighting was already echoing all around us. In less than 24 hours I became someone else, in less than a day everything I knew about myself changed.
On February 24th, we woke up and all the news channels were talking about war. The kindergartens were closed, so Artem stayed at home with his mother. It was my first day working at the podiatry clinic, and the drive that should been 20 minutes took over an hour. By noon no clients had come to the clinic, so they told us to go home, because the medical centre would close indefinitely and our internship was cancelled.
I went back home and got organised with my mother, went shopping for some basic things (rice, sugar, oil), some medicine and candles. My mother and I took turns sleeping, in fact we were mostly on guard while Artem slept, but as I heard the first bombing raids, I decided I would do anything for Artem to survive. I didn’t want to tell him there was war, I made up a lie about some cars having crashed on the street. Suddenly we decided we should flee, I don’t know where I found this strength in me, but we just took a few things with us, packed some clothes and our papers, a few books and Artem’s favourite toy, MUR the cat, and got in the car.
