My brother came around five in the morning and said the war had begun. I stood frozen, with no idea what to pack. We hadn’t prepared anything—no emergency bags, nothing. I left in the clothes I was wearing, without even a bottle of water.

As I was leaving, my brother, who is a man of faith, pressed a small, blessed icon into my hand. Giving me something he truly believed in was his way of giving me hope. I didn’t know if I would ever see him again, or if there would even be a home to return to.

The train station was chaos. A train would arrive with no schedule, its only destination listed as “West.” People stormed the first one, making it impossible to board. By sheer luck, another pulled up right behind it, and we squeezed on. The journey took four days.

But Lviv was even worse. We waited for a full day in a line that stretched to the station entrance. Finally, at three in the morning, we crammed into an electric train. The windows were sealed shut and the doors were locked. There was no air to breathe.

Then, in the middle of a dark forest, the train just stopped. We stood there until morning, trapped in the suffocating silence, with a single thought spinning in my head: what if something hits us right now?