Hometown Bucha didn't feel like home anymore

My name is Nastya and I am from Ukraine, from a small town named Bucha.

I spent my whole happiest childhood here and have lots of vivid memories. Unfortunately, after 4:00 a.m. on February 24, in besides happy memories, I got the ones I will never forget in my life. I woke up to the sounds of rockets and terrible explosions, like the rest of the country, I could not believe that this happened to us and continued to get ready for school, hoping that it was a normal morning, until I heard from my parents that the war had started. Thinking that it was safer outside the city, we invited everyone to our house while fighter jets flew overhead.

At first, I sincerely believed that civilians were not being shot at, and only later did I realize how wrong I was. We spent the whole night after the landing in fear, lying on the floor in a room with the windows taped shut, with only one wish: to survive the night and see our family once again. I was scared of every sound, and every second I wrote to my friends asking if they were alive. We heard about a column of tanks entering the city and decided not to wait any longer, we took almost nothing with us, knowing that we might never get back. With two dogs, 9 puppies and a cat, we were miraculously not among those who were shot on the way out of the city. Our family was very lucky, unlike the courts we saw for the last time that day.

Despite the fact that we were relatively safe, we could not live in peace knowing that someone was still out there doing everything to survive. The worst message in my entire life was from a friend who did not have time to leave: "Nastya, they shot at us, they stupidly opened fire at us." After returning to Bucha, a place so dear to me, I no longer felt at home. Life here seemed to have stopped, no one walked the streets, no one walked the dogs, I heard only silence and every day I remembered everything that happened here. I am very grateful to everyone who helped us survive this and I am happy to see the city coming back to life and help rebuild the burned buildings, but I am sure that neither I nor anyone else will be able to forget the horror that happened and is still happening in the cities of our Ukraine.

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