06/06/2026
Chapter 2
The Season When Everything Fell Apart
May, 2003.
I was twenty-three years old, standing somewhere between girlhood and adulthood, and for the first time in my life, I had absolutely no idea where I was going.
Until then, life had always moved in a straight line.
School.
University.
Exams.
Responsibilities.
Expectations.
In Ukraine, especially in those years, life was not something you questioned too deeply. You survived it. You followed the path in front of you because everyone around you was doing the same. The country itself still felt tired from the collapse of the Soviet Union. People carried exhaustion in their faces the way others carried handbags. Conversations revolved around money, shortages, uncertainty, and how to somehow make it through another month.
Dreams existed, but quietly.
Most people didn’t speak them out loud.
And yet, despite all of that, I had always believed life would somehow work itself out. I thought if I studied hard enough, obeyed the rules, and tried to be a good person, the future would eventually become clear.
But suddenly, nothing was clear anymore.
I had a five-month-old baby in my arms.
And beside me stood a person I once believed was my forever — yet I had never felt more alone in my entire life.
Loneliness inside a relationship is a special kind of pain.
It confuses you.
Because from the outside, your life still looks complete.
But inside, something slowly begins collapsing.
Every morning I woke up with heaviness in my chest that I could not explain. It wasn’t dramatic enough to call depression. Not visible enough for anyone to notice. It was quieter than that.
It felt like disappearing.
I remember the tiny apartment where we lived. The walls were thin, the furniture old, the floors cold during Ukrainian mornings. The kitchen smelled of boiled potatoes, tea, and sometimes damp laundry drying near the heater because we were trying to save money. Outside the windows, gray apartment buildings stood like silent witnesses to millions of similar lives.
Women carried grocery bags heavier than their bodies.
Old men sold vegetables near train stations.
Teachers, engineers, doctors — people with education and intelligence — earned almost nothing.
And I was one of them.
I worked as a teacher for the equivalent of fifteen dollars a month.
Fifteen dollars.
Even writing those words now feels unreal.
It was barely enough to survive, let alone build a future. My parents quietly helped us when they could, but I carried deep shame about it. I hated needing help. I hated feeling like adulthood had arrived, but independence had not.
Debt followed me everywhere like a shadow.
Every trip to the store required mental math.
Every bill felt terrifying.
Every unexpected expense felt catastrophic.
Sometimes I would stand in line holding groceries and silently remove items before reaching the cashier because I realized we couldn’t afford them.
Bread. Milk. Eggs. Diapers.
Life became a constant calculation of survival.
But strangely, the hardest part wasn’t the money.
It was fear.
Fear that my life would never become more than this.
Fear that I was slowly losing myself.
Fear that somehow everyone else understood adulthood except me.
At night, when the baby finally slept, silence became dangerous.
Because silence forced me to think.
I would lie awake staring at the ceiling, unable to calm my mind. Anxiety moved through my body like invisible electricity. My thoughts raced endlessly:
How will we survive?
What if nothing changes?
What if this is all life will ever be?
Back then, mental health was not something people openly discussed in Ukraine. You didn’t say you were overwhelmed. You didn’t say you were emotionally exhausted. You simply kept going.
Women especially were expected to endure.
To sacrifice.
To stay quiet.
To survive without complaining.
And so I did what many women around me did.
I smiled when people asked how I was.
But inside, I felt lost.
I remember pushing the baby stroller through cracked sidewalks while cold wind hit my face. Ukraine in the early 2000s still carried the heaviness of transition. The older generation was trying to survive after losing the stability they once knew. Younger people were desperate to leave, desperate for opportunity, desperate to believe life could become something bigger than struggle.
Everyone seemed to be waiting for rescue.
Some waited for politics to change.
Some waited for money.
Some waited for another country.
Some waited for miracles.
I didn’t know it then, but I was waiting too.
Not for a person to save me.
But for a sign that my life still had purpose.
There were moments I felt guilty for wanting more. After all, I had a healthy daughter. I had food. I had a roof over my head. Many people had less.
But deep inside me, another voice kept whispering:
You were made for something different.
I tried to silence that voice for a long time because it felt dangerous. Hope can feel dangerous when your reality looks hopeless. Sometimes dreaming hurts more than accepting limitation.
Still, the voice remained.
Quiet. Persistent.
And maybe that was God.
Maybe faith begins exactly there — in moments when nothing externally changes, but internally you refuse to completely die.
Looking back now, I realize something important:
Pain rarely arrives to destroy us immediately.
First, it introduces itself slowly.
Through exhaustion.
Through confusion.
Through unanswered questions.
Through mornings where getting out of bed feels heavier than it should.
And at the time, you don’t realize life is preparing you for transformation.
You think you are falling apart.
But sometimes you are simply being rebuilt.
One evening, I stood near the window holding my daughter in complete darkness because we were trying to save electricity. The city lights outside flickered weakly through the foggy glass. She slept peacefully against my chest while tears silently rolled down my face.
Not dramatic tears.
Quiet tears.
The kind nobody sees.
I remember asking God a question I had never asked before:
“What am I supposed to do with my life?”
Not tomorrow.
Not next week.
My life.
Because somewhere deep inside, I knew survival alone could not be the purpose of existence.
I did not know then that this season of confusion would eventually become the foundation of everything.
The fear.
The uncertainty.
The loneliness.
The financial struggle.
The feeling of being completely lost.
All of it would later become fuel.
But at twenty-three years old, standing in a cold apartment in Ukraine with a sleeping baby in my arms and anxiety in my chest, I could not yet see the future.
I only knew one thing:
Something inside me refused to give up.
And that small refusal — barely visible, barely alive — would change the course of my entire life.
