I've been trying really really hard to take care of myself, to pull together my mental health, to get back to teaching, and I was making slow progress, but the Odesa seaport bombing freaked me out so much that not only my mind, but my body gave out.
I spent an entire day in shock, I forced myself to eat - and I nearly threw up. It's like you're two people at once: the absolutely terrified and broken down person, and this second person who needs to take care of the first one because there is nobody else to do it for you. So it's like an out-of-body experience when you make yourself eat, make yourself rest, make yourself unclench your jaws, and take meds on time. Throughout the day I kept getting worse and worse: my tooth started hurting, I still don't know if it's a legitimate dental issue or if I've been grinding my teeth so much. My knees and shoulders joints hurt, my head hurts, I have shooting pains in my neck, my stomach hurts, and by the end of the day I had fever on top of it all.
I went to bed early, or I should say I tried because I just couldn't make myself sleep since I did not feel safe in my bed. I could not relax, I was tense to the point not only did I hear every little sound in two blocks radius - I hallucinated sounds. With two air raids during the night, I did not get any proper sleep anyway, so I'm still groggy and miserable today.
I cannot explain to you the way your body tenses up when you are already curled in a nervous ball in your hallway amid all the explosions shaking down your building, and then you hear this whistling sound of an approaching missile. No matter what you tell yourself, your brain imagines it heading directly for you. And you know what you tell yourself for comfort? You tell yourself that Caliber is a supersonic missile: if you hear the whistle - you've already been lucky. It's kind of not comforting at all, but that's all I've got.