May 10th 2024

Yuriy illustrates the challenging journey of a veteran struggling to navigate the complexities of ordinary life after years of intense military service.

You can email Yuriy, ask him questions or simply send him a message of support: [email protected]   

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TRANSCRIPT: (Apple Podcasts & Podbean app users can enjoy accurate closed captions)

It is May 10.  

Have you ever returned from vacation to work and could not remember what to do? It seems to me that it's a quirk of the brain- it quickly forgets even the most important things under the influence of emotions, and just a few days are enough to forget what seemed completely familiar. Now imagine that you did not go on vacation, but to war, not for a week, but for several years with emotions so powerful and overwhelming that they literally override everything you've experienced  before. How do you then return to normal life, what to do to regain, not only work skills, but even everyday ones? Honestly, I don't know. 

But I do know for sure that's exactly what happens- a person practically forgets what ordinary life is and how to exist in it. I've already mentioned that the specifics of a driving a car on the front line are in no way the same as driving in ordinary life. On the front line, no one would ever think of fastening seat belts because in case of coming under fire and serious damage to a vehicle, you need to leave the car as quickly as possible, and seat belts hinder that. On the front line, no one uses turn signals; everyone drives at the maximum possible speed. There is no chance of accidentally running over pedestrian or crash into a bus at a stop. And you quickly get used to this frontline driving style, almost instantly forgetting how to drive in other conditions. And when you have leave or vacation and you with your new skills, find yourself in the city and you drive there as if for the first time, constantly reminding yourself to use turn signals, keep distance, not exit speed. And it's really hard.

Let me take a moment from this conversation to thank those who write me messages with words of support and those who donate money to my Go Fund Me and Buy Me A Coffee pages. I'm still holding on. Thanks to you. 

Okay, back to it. I remember coming home for the first time after a few weeks in the Army. I was given a day to rest a bit and to clean my clothes. And here's the second task, I almost failed. I simply could not remember how to use the washing machine. My own washing machine, which I turned on almost every day for at least five years. I did it automatically without even looking, but just a few weeks in the Army, a few weeks of heavy stress, unfamiliar, powerful emotions, and that's all. The skill that was once automatic, vanished without a trace. 

I forgot how to use ATMs, forgot how to pay bills for electricity and heating. My language changed dramatically. Many previously common wars simply disappeared because were unnecessary in the Army, but new ones appeared, which  belong to military life. And they've become so ingrained in me that I use them even when it's completely inappropriate. 

You know, there are hundreds of thousands of people like me out there now. People who have forgotten how to live ordinary lives, who have become unaccustomed to simple things, who find it difficult just to be among civilians to communicate with them. I have a big request for you- don't laugh at the veterans who can't do things that seem simple and obvious to everyone else. In reality, war makes everything complicated and difficult. Several years in active duty completely changed a person. But even changed by constant stress, forged by heavy experience, a human being still remains a human being.