The last month I found myself serving in a strange place where it’s still 2022.
There in the town near us, at nine in the morning, there is truly a moment of silence. People actually stop and get out of their cars and stand for five (FIVE) minutes. Once we weren’t paying attention, not watching the clock, rushing from one task to another, and I look around, people were out of their cars looking at me, not angrily but instead, puzzled, like, buddy, what’s up, is something wrong?
At ATB, I grabbed a suitcase, carrying it, the cashier moves everyone aside, stops, and shouts across the line, “you’re a soldier, come on through, we serve soldiers without waiting in line here.” Someone tried to complain, saying they only had one bun, while the soldier had so much, could they at least check out the bun first. The cashier snapped at him, saying she wouldn’t serve them at all, this is ATB, there are rules, and the rule is soldiers don’t wait in line.
This town highlights a contrast. A contrast between the attitude towards the military here and across Ukraine. And this contrast makes one think about attitudes towards the military in general.
And I finally understood what this attitude is.
We are all dead. The attitude towards us is like that towards the dead.
In Ukraine, the dead are highly respected. If someone dies, their words gain great authority they didn’t have while alive. You can’t speak ill of them. It’s customary to drink at the table in their honor and remain silent.
But at the same time, it’s understood that the dead are separate from the living, and no matter how much the living respect the dead, no one is in a hurry to die, and everyone understands and respects people’s unwillingness to die. People remember the dead on memorial days, it’s just that for us, memorial days are daily at nine, and honestly, it annoys the living.
Here, the dead walk among the living, but the living try to look away, to ignore and pretend everything is normal. The dead also have their own code, according to which, when walking among the living, one should dress in the attire of the living to avoid upsetting the living further. The only ones who are deliberately dressed as the dead are the angels of death, who carry the living into the world of the dead. The living even call them that—soul-catchers—and resist them as fiercely as a person can resist inevitable death.
The dead also often deceive death and try to ignore their world of the dead, living a life among the living. The living fear such people, and the dead despise them if they do it systematically, though from time to time everyone tries to do it once themselves. In any company of the living, such a person is easy to spot. They are either too alive or the opposite, yet always there’s almost a visible air wall between them and the living.
Of course, this is too simple an analogy. There is a huge transitional class of people who are not afraid of the dead, live with them, consider them a normal part of their lives, and do not treat them specially. People who are in the rule “you are at war or for war” are those who are truly “for war” every day. Their misfortune is that for the dead they are living friends. And for the living, they are more dead than the dead because at least the dead sit there in their cemeteries far away, do not really go to the living, and do not remind them of their existence.
Of course, as a real skeleton archer of the army of the dead, I want everyone to be like me because if our army consists only of what necromancers can dig up in rural cemeteries, we will not win the war, but the living want the dead to win the war for them. Therefore, I gather real dead anger and want everyone to be like me, skeleton archers. Because I live in my world and believe that the only true living life is our life here. But a short vacation in Uzhgorod, and it becomes clear that in the whole town of hundreds of thousands, only I think that way.
And it’s also interesting about veterans. In this analogy, veterans are not alive. They are the dead allowed to return to the world of the living. Zombies. They look like people if well painted, but they are revealed by the gaze of dead eyes and even their manner of movement. It is clear that they are much more interested in the world of the dead than the world of the living, and if death calls, they will return instantly. No matter what they say or how much they hate the world of the dead, they are still in it, and all their friends are there too.
And it is clear that for these hundreds of thousands of dead, a separate ministry is needed to somehow keep them within certain limits. And it is clear that the living will never allow zombies to head such a ministry, it will be headed by a living person, preferably the most alive. And to all the groans of zombies and the clattering of skeleton teeth, the living will respond with endless respect and love while completely ignoring the essence of the message.
Of course, I have an answer to what I would like to do with all this. But what is the point of saying this? I am a skeleton archer, I am a siege engineer of the Forsaken army. No one will listen to my plan because it would demand something from the living, and the living do not want to listen to the dead, the living want to live their own lives.
Today I read a post (see above – Ed.) that really struck me, it hit the target so accurately.
But first, a preamble. About relationships with death.
PTSD forms differently for everyone. Mine formed for personal reasons. And it was related to death.
You might have heard that some fighters lose their fear of danger? It’s true. I can confirm this. At first, you’re scared, and you have to overcome it. You sit in a trench, waiting for the moment when the command comes through the headphones, and you step out of the safe trench and into the darkness, into the unknown. You’re scared until the very last moment. But then the command comes, you stand up and move forward. Once. Twice. Thrice.
And over time, your brain decides that everything’s okay. That all these triggers are meaningless. You stop feeling that paralyzing fear, at most – an adrenaline trigger, and you just go ahead and do what needs to be done.
You might have heard criticism of people who died due to recklessness in preventable situations? Well, people who say this are detached from the front. Everyone who has dealt with danger occasionally does risky things. Simply because they no longer feel the danger.
You’re sitting in a “safe” spot that’s being peppered at close range all night by an RPK? Screw it, you’ll still lift your head to see where that bastard is shooting from. Knowing that this spot is targeted, and your head is perfectly visible in thermal. At first, you count the shots and try to stick your head out during reloading pauses. Then just whenever you think the moment is right.
You come back to your bunker, ignoring the news that these plantations have been heavily shelled for three days. Finally, good weather, you don’t want to waste a flying day. You grimly look at the scatter of exploded and unexploded munitions near the bunker and the new craters from the impacts. The pilot says there’s a new crater from a KAB on the field. You stand, everyone waits for your decision.
– Screw it, let’s set up the antenna. Well, they’re targeting here, so what, not work?
And everyone calmly does their work. The decision is made, so we work. Danger is secondary.
You hear the sound of an FPV, take a shotgun and head toward that sound through the plantation. Just hope it’s not an Opta; that one can fly between trees. You’re focused on the direction of the sound because you understand it’s crucial to see the FPV first and open fire on it. Worse if the FPV sees you first. Or if it kills someone here. And you go, feeling only the adrenaline tremor. And you realize that near you, in the plantations, there are others moving toward the sound with AKs or shotguns, instead of waiting out the threat in some bunker.
You live like this, and around you live people with the same view of danger. And a big disregard for it. Because there’s too much of it, and the brain just doesn’t react to it like it used to.
But there’s a catch. People die. Strangers. Then acquaintances. And you realize they were in situations you’ve been in. But you were lucky. They weren’t.
You realize that you wrongly perceive danger, just like they did. And it led them down. And it will lead you down. Because you’ve forgotten how to react properly.
And this is where PTSD starts.
The brain has a basic function – the sense of self-preservation. This is a basic program. The brain cannot ignore it.
But you understand that the program has a bug because it’s simply overwhelmed. And you accept as a fact that someday you’ll make a mistake, or be unlucky, and that’s it, darkness.
But the brain doesn’t want to accept this. And it can’t make you react differently either. And you just live with it, constantly bothered by this fact. And you try to resolve this dilemma in your head so that the brain finally calms down. And you feel the tension from this unresolved issue. And it prevents you from living peacefully and focusing on daily tasks.
And somehow I resolved it. In an unexpected way. And it worked.
I decided that I was already dead. I died, and it was a long time ago.
I couldn’t move away from the bank of the Kalmius after crossing, and they caught me from the enemy outpost near the shore.
I didn’t leave the position after counter-sniper work, which was covered with 120mm mines during the day.
I stayed to sleep at the base when rockets hit it.
I exposed myself at Lyubomyrivka when, out of carelessness, we went to the same place three times to shoot Russian paratroopers, because there was simply no other position, as the artillery literally destroyed heaps of nearby groves.
I stayed there. I am no better than those who under similar conditions stayed there. I also stayed. I died because it’s logical under those conditions.
But I am alive. I think. I exist. So how?
It’s a bonus. A bonus given by life. To live today, not to think about tomorrow, and to rejoice in what you have today. Because that is the value of this bonus, which life has given to the deceased. Just live today. And appreciate it. Because it’s the last bonus life has given you. And it can always take it back. But then you won’t be able to do anything, and today you can be grateful to your fate for this bonus.
And it worked. This strange logical construct stopped the turmoil beneath my consciousness. I don’t know why. Perhaps because the brain simply got tired of looking for some logical construct that would not conflict with the logic of the present. But it worked. I let go of this situation and stopped focusing on what I shouldn’t. And I still live like this.
And today I am reading a post by Oleksandr Noinets.
And my skin itches while reading it. Maybe it affected only me like this, but…
Photo: Anna Semyonyuk, Uzhhorod City Council Facebook
