"Why have people turned their attention to a pile of lifeless scrap metal?"

Egor (name changed) is 27 years old, works in a marketplace and works part-time as a cook. He writes about the value of life, love and friendship, and how painful it is to watch them dissolve into everyday life behind z-caps and T-shirts.

Hi. I wanted to share with you not really a story, but rather a state of mind.

24, now a number that is associated with evil in the minds of millions. And this day became the day when time stood still, when life stood still.

In what age, day or moment did man forget love, compassion and kindness? When did he turn his attention to the pile of lifeless scrap metal that brings death and destruction? I am neither dead nor alive, walking these dirty and gray streets, looking at the drooping and embittered faces of people. I see these posters on theaters, on hospitals, on bus stops. I see how at work, with frantic triumphalism, they tape these letters to the windows, raving about the enemy. What are they intoxicated with?

Life after 24.02.2022 became unbearable: misunderstanding, fear, despair, tears and pain. And every time I ask the same question: why? I evaporate like water in a glass that was forgotten to put away from the sun. My family (which is a very, very small circle) did not react well, but they do not show any emotion.

There are acquaintances who grin and salivate, clenching their fists with fierce loyalty to defend the tsar, justifying it by the necessity and greatness of the long-suffering people. You should know how hard it is to endure the order, the T-shirt or the cap with the letter Z, how tears come to their eyes when their loved ones take away their belongings for the mobilized, how terrible it is to look at the teenagers who take away the patches with the Wagner insignia on them. And dozens of Russian flags. How colleagues yell about our president being a great man and even giving names to children after him. The force is gone. The emptiness.

Speaking of emigration: if it were possible, I would gladly do it, first by train, by plane, on foot. To put it bluntly, I consider myself more European; their values, aspirations, morals, are to my liking. Here I am a stranger, among "theirs". An outcast. What helps me not to go crazy? It's hope, a kind of childish hope that this darkness is about to leave us. Innocent people die, those who wanted to LIVE, to LOVE, to CREATE.

Mankind does not learn from its mistakes...

And I want to thank your team for everything you do. Thanks to you and those people who are not afraid to speak their minds, I believe in humanity, I believe in love and light. Please take care of yourselves. We need you, we need those who are still on the side of light.

Thank you, my good people.