Snapshots of Ukrainian Life (towards the end of that life)

We're leaving.

In July.

I don't know more than that.

Not how, not where, and hardly even why, except that it will happen.

It was crushing to think about at first. Talking about it, admitting it, entertaining any thoughts of the after- ugh. What do you do when you have a dream and that dream ends? Where do you go from that? How do you say goodbye to something you love?

But eventually a strange sensation began to trickle into my heart. Relief? Excitement? Dread? Whatever it is, I lack the words for it. The words of other people, though, can get pretty close to describing this kaleidoscope of feelings...

“It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.” 

 ― John Green, Paper Towns  

“There are times when the actual experience of leaving something makes you wish desperately that you could stay, and then there are times when the leaving reminds you a hundred times over why exactly you had to leave in the first place.”
― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way

“There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it."
― Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie  

“If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose."

 ― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“In life, a person will come and go from many homes. We may leave a house, a town, a room, but that does not mean those places leave us. Once entered, we never entirely depart the homes we make for ourselves in the world. They follow us, like shadows, until we come upon them again, waiting for us in the mist.”
― Ari Berk, Death Watch

“And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 

“Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.”
― Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road 

“And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories. ”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Heaven to Betsy 

“I give you this to take with you: Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.”
― Judith Minty, Letters to My Daughters

“And I realized that there's a big difference between deciding to leave and knowing where to go.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything 

 “I'll tell you this. Leaving that which you love breaks your heart open. But you will find a jewel inside, and this precious jewel is the opening of your heart to all that is new and all that is different, and it will be the making of you-if you allow it to be.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Leaving Everything Most Loved 

“You can't go home again”
― Thomas Wolfe 

“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night 

 “I leave, and the leaving is so exhilarating I know I can never go back. But then what? Do I just keep leaving places, and leaving them, and leaving them, tramping a perpetual journey?”
― John Green, Paper Towns 

“Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Everyone leaves, everything ends, it's surely the oldest story in the book. You've probably been in this particular stage of life before too and I know some of you had to say goodbye to Ukraine as well. Please share with me- how did you start the next chapter? How did you find a new dream?



And if this is all too gloomy, here's something happy.