One of favorite things to do has always been taking walks in the evening, looking at lights in the houses, and imagining how happy and cozy people inside were.

This simple joy has been taken away from me because now I can only think about Ukrainians, sitting in the dark and shivering with cold.

Another favorite thing was looking at the sky. I love the sky, I even had dreams where I’d stare at the sky and feel immense joy and peace.

This is also now gone. In my dreams the sky now rains bombs and everything explodes and burns around me.

It’s weird to talk about innocence at my age but I feel that I had a lot of it, and now it’s gone. I can’t unsee what I’ve seen, even though it was only on a screen. With tragic events, at least with time you process them and somehow narrate them to yourself in a way that brings a measure of comfort but with this war it’s something even worse every day.

I’m walking wounded, leaving a trail of blood behind me.

Today is Holodomor Remembrance Day. Ninety years have gone by, and Russians are once again genociding Ukrainians while some pouty Westerners are once again making excuses because they have once again projected their fantasies onto Russia.

At a Tim Hortons in the Laurentians, I tried to order in French. I practiced, and to me my short speech sounded just fine.

But the cafe workers looked at me with compassion and switched into a very tortured English.

“Have you brushed your teeth?” I asked Klara.

“Well, I brushed them a lot in my past,” she said. “My past is literally filled with teeth getting brushed.”