In a moment I'm never sure if I will live the next day or the next week, case of so many Ukrainians, I will to go very personal here this time.
This message is especially directed to my new friends I've made online after the outbreak of the war. I want to thank you for following me in this journey, for the friendship, for the emotional support and for the coffees you kindly provided to me and my family along these past months in this BMC (buymeacoffee) platform.
I was hesitant to the idea of leaving an open board for financial contributions. I was strongly raised with the concept that every grant received is a compensation for a service provided in value, and I didn't want anything close to playing victim, but I was living in an emergency: I had just lost everything and had no savings to proceed on anything.
The most unbearable pain was the impotence of sending help to my wife and my kid in Poland. Many times I skipped meals and walked long kilometers to save anything that could help them in a more expensive country where she cannot find work because she doesn't know the language. I'm not saying this to glorify my misery: it's only a thankful note about how your donations have been helping this family. They have been established as a lifeline at the most needed time for us, and that I hope we are soon to overcome.
Your coffees helped the Kravchuks to restore dignity in life at the period our country has been suffering the immorality of the invasion or the humiliation of having to choose to pay for food or medications. Inflation has eroded the purchasing power of ordinary Ukrainians, making life increasingly unaffordable for the working class citizens like me who at best can earn a few hundreds of dollars a month. Many times, one dollar per hour.
Your contributions have been saving this family from poverty, but I don't want to talk about donations anymore. I want to offer something valuable in exchange for your coffees. After so many blog entries and the book, I want you to consider my writing efforts before my personal circumstances.
Consider that I'm a writer, and by supporting me, financially or not, you are supporting someone who really believes that words are also powerful weapons towards peace and against brutality.
I suspect that destiny provides some kind of mission for everyone who lives through such an intense experience like a war. My mission, maybe, is to register my thoughts and my feelings to you and invite you to come a little closer to this nightmare that concerns everyone of us. Concerns because this is not a war against Ukraine, but a war against humanity.
Little while ago I couldn’t imagine that pursuing a writing career could be a dream. I never even thought that dreams could come in the middle of nightmares, but this dream of being a writer is actually coming true. Your trust, your concern and your kindness are the vectors of my moving forward.
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Thank you everyone for everything. Thank you for reading my blog and reading my book. Thank you for all the feedback, even the negative ones. Thank you for subscribing to my Substack. Thank you for standing with Ukraine. And thank you for being here.