A mild night in the Ukrainian winter, the temperature is just above freezing point, the sky is cloudy, and occasional stars are making their way through the cloud layer.

The atmospheric masses are at a standstill. On the night of February 24, 2022, there is a dull night over the entire Ukraine. In Odessa, the blue-grey light of a laptop illuminates the windows of a house on Lymann Street. Anna is observing the airspace using an app. She notices no more planes over Ukraine. She goes to sleep. It’s 4 a.m. A few moments later, the first explosions of Russian missiles tear her out of her dreams – and with her, the entire Ukrainian nation. Her homeland is attacked, and with it, the hopes and dreams of many; she is now at war.

Instantly, the flow of time changed; the change of days of the week is perceived only conditionally, and everything merges into one long day. Memory content is what subjectively stretches our time duration, explains Marc Wittmann from the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology.

Time passes differently; it behaves relative to the observer.

The Ukrainian population experiences many processes of adaptation during this time, and it goes through phases of transformation: shock, denial, fear, but also acceptance. Everyday routines are broken in the social and public spheres and sometimes overwhelmed by emotional states. Some impressions are difficult to put into words; they are unspeakable things, they are the things that others do not want to know, cannot understand. Does the psyche find peace even when the war is over?

“Only the dead have seen the end of war,” the American philosopher, George Santayana, argued in his book “Soliloquies In England And Later Soliloquies” published in 1922. The experience of living in a war-torn country is impossible to put into words.

Sometimes people from abroad ask how it feels to experience the war: “How are you?” they ask.

“I’m okay,” replies Misha, a volunteer from Lviv, or Hlib, a DJ from Kyiv, or Andreyi, a soldier on the front line. Ya okay.