The past 4 days were hell. Since the end of the grain deal, russia has been trying their best to destroy Odesa seaport and our grain storage. So far they've destroyed 60 000 tons of grain 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley. The attacks usually happen during the night: roughly from 2 to 5 am we do not sleep in Odesa. They combine using drones and missiles.
During the first of these attacks, they started with around 30 drones in numerous waves to make them arrive in a steady line. The explosions kept happening for hours non-stop. Then, after we deflected the drone attack and the air defense chat posted "OK, that was the last of them, and with no new launches we'll let you go to sleep soon, just let us double-check the air space". We all sighed a sigh of relief, but two minutes later we received a new message: "6 Calibers heading for Odesa, STAY IN SHELTER!!" All of those 6 Calibers were launched from the Black Sea and got to Odesa in a matter of minutes, they were also not launched one by one, they were flying all together, like a swarm. The sound of air defense shooting and them and the sound of them exploding created not even a chain of explosions, they created a continuous ROARING in my ears. The drones were supposed to wear off our air defense, and Calibers were meant to finish the job and destroy our seaport. Our air defense shot down EVERYTHING! And as you know, they DON'T have all the necessary equipment to make it possible. What they did was impossible, but they did it anyway. I am forever in awe of these people. My balcony door was forced open by the shock wave, but the windows stayed safe and I was safe too. Several people were injured in the city, no casualties. The next day I went volunteering and people came to the office bringing pieces of drones that fell onto their buildings and cars.
Honestly, I thought that was their "tantrum bombing" about both the grain deal and the Kerch bridge, and I was hoping to sleep peacefully the next night - the night that became the worst attack on Odesa yet. To be completely honest with you, I remember little of it because my brain apparently already blocked it off in some "we don't talk about it" trauma segment of the memory. The Calibers and drones were mixed up together this time, the explosions were louder, the messages about new launches more frequent. I was curled up in a ball, with a blanket thrown over my head blasting YouTbe shorts on my phone trying to muffle the sounds of explosions and get distracted because I felt like I would lose my mind any moment now. 60 000 tons of grain were destroyed. Our god-like air defenders have their limits. We cannot intercept Onix missiles and that's what they started using. This time people died.
The day after that night I was absolutely devastated, I imagined how this would be my life now, how every night we will be attacked by dozens of missiles and drones, how I will never again have a full night's sleep, how my city will be slowly destroyed, turned into a shadow of Mariupol. My neighbors started talking about going into underground shelters instead of relying on hiding in the bathrooms behind two walls. There was another attack that night, there were more explosions. In the morning I learned that they attacked an industrial building, waited for rescuers to arrive, and attacked it again.
Yesterday, on the fourth day, my panic attack started at around 9 pm, when the sun went down. I knew that the night was coming, and I knew that the missiles would come with it. I took sedatives and I went to bed early to catch some sleep before the inevitable. Either due to bad weather or whatever else, they only targeted the oblast region (basically the territory around the city, but not the city center where I live). The first alarm was at 3 am but it lasted for about half an hour and was suspiciously short. I did not get to fall asleep from anxiety until 4 am when the real deal started. A few explosions I heard were very distant, to the point that I was questioning if I really heard them or if it was my agitated imagination. Another sunrise that I met on the floor of the bathroom with a blanket over my head. Then another air raid happened in the morning today. The attacks on Odesa during the day are rare, it caught me off guard. I had to drop my breakfast and run to the hallway. Then there was another attack, and another one. This one was bigger, from several directions, many regions of Ukraine were targeted. And even still, at this very moment different regions of Ukraine are getting attacked, it has been happening on and off all day.
It is 6 pm as I am typing this. The sun is out, it is a lovely day, I did some work, I ran some chores, and it is so crazy to me: waking up sleep deprived after shaking from explosions all night, and then going on about your day like normal. Working, cleaning, cooking, a walk in the park, lemonade in a cafe with a friend, buying a book I wanted for a long time, calling my mom for her curry chicken recipe... In a few hours, it's going to be dark again. My blankets are rolled out in the hallway, I will probably have a panic attack again, and I will go to bed early, to catch some sleep before shaking from fear. That's just another chore, that's just what my reality is like right now. Whatever russians do is further proof that they are terrorists, whatever their goals are, we have to be focused on ours. The more scared I am of russian bombs the more determined I am to fight against "russkiy mir". It is VERY hard to accept that there is not much I can do against the missiles flying at me, but I have to stay calm and let the professionals do their job. Instead, I keep envisioning the day when an alarm will sound signaling the end of an air raid, and without any of us knowing it would be the last air raid we'll ever have to endure, and then we will never hear this sound again.