Recently I have redirected my volunteering time to making “trench candles”. It’s these things from empty cans, old carton boxes, and paraffin. They are meant to provide warmth to our soldiers in the trenches. I wish I could tear myself in two because making masking nets is important too: the nets hide them from the enemy, the candles keep them warm – how do you choose which is more deserving of your time? The candle people have fewer working hands, so I joined them to sort of balance things out.
The first time I went there, Katya, the volunteer coordinator, was showing me the ropes and took this picture of me. 
This is the first time someone took a photo of me while doing any sort of volunteering, and idk why but it sent me on a hell of an emotional journey.
On one hand, I regret that I don’t volunteer more. I do not volunteer every day and to be honest with you, I do not even volunteer every week, sometimes I just lay face down in bed and focus on breathing in and breathing out as my mind is just screaming one endless note of pain. Sometimes I spend my free time painting in my room or even going out to sketch in the park, sometimes I just watch movies I downloaded on my tablet and eat pizza all day (pizza is my guilty pleasure and I feel like such a traitor and a failure to society every time I do this), sometimes I go out with friends. All this time I could be volunteering, making those nets, making those candles. But I don’t. Yes, yes, I can hear you all already: burnout is real, I should take care of myself and my mental health too, whatever I do is better than nothing, the weight of this entire thing doesn’t rest on my shoulders alone, and all that. But what you don’t see in this photo is me holding back tears after a story Katya told me of how one of the soldiers was supposed to get time off to attend his own wedding but a day earlier the frost hit during the night and instead of his wedding he headed for the hospital to get his foot amputated after severe frostbite. What about his mental health? What about his time off?
But then again watching myself from the side in this photo I could finally tell myself that I am trying and even though no matter what I do and how much I do, it will never feel enough, so I should just keep doing whatever I can do and rely on others to do their little bit, and then all together every little bit will form into something bigger, it all adds up.
I don’t just mean other volunteers, I also mean you.
The following paragraphs are going to be about a subject widely believed to be uncomfortable and private, but we are gonna do it, we are gonna talk about money.
I still have a job and I still get a salary, I did not even have a week of payment lost during this entire year because my boss and friend that I work for is a titan who keeps powering on to provide solace to her students and means to survive to her staff. But it was always only half of my income, and I earned the other half by teaching English and later, Ukrainian. With power outages, online teaching turned out to be very hard to do, and since it also took a toll on my mental health – until this day I have not found a proper solution for this. But I did not rush to look for another job, instead I dedicated my time to volunteering and taking care of my family and myself because you caught me when I fell and I allowed myself to lean on you.
You know by now that financial struggle is one of my worst fears because of growing up poor, and over this year every time I would start panicking because of some unexpected expenses, I would always open my blog, see the donations that you’ve sent me, do some mental math, realize that I can afford to pay for everything for another month – and relax, put it out of my mind for a while. Sometimes I would do it several times a day to reassure myself.
Your support has been helping me so much, it has made such a difference for me. I treasure every kind word that you’ve told me, all the offers of help, all the donations. You don’t know how much it means because I haven’t been able to find the right words to tell you, and I have been looking for those words every day for almost a year now. I am pretty good with words, and still I cannot find exactly the right ones. But I thought this picture would express it better.
You are making THIS possible. You are giving the strength not only for me personally to stay afloat but so I can give the remains of it to others.
You helped me get up today, have my coffee, go to volunteer center, where for those two hours that the power was on I made 100+ trench candles, they will keep a 100+ soldiers warm for 1 night, and a 100+ of them won’t have to amputate their legs, instead, they will fight and keep the murder hobos away, so you, I, and the world that we love will be safe for another day. Because it all adds up, we all do what we can and then every little drop flows into the ocean.