Essays & Stories

How I Lived Under a Van

Escaped war, got dental surgery in a storm, lived under a van, got ban*ed from working in a LGBT+ bar — the usual refugee experience, I guess. Hi, I’m a trans woman, and a couple of years ago I left Ukraine (war zone, may I remind) to seek safety in the Netherlands.

There were a lot of birds.

I arrived with a raging wisdom tooth infection. My first act in Amsterdam was limping through a storm to get emergency dental surgery, barely able to see from the pain. Romantic, I know. I then slept on a rocking boat-hostel while doped on painkillers and sea-sickness — so we’re off to a great start.

My tent — home for a while.

I moved to Rotterdam to find refugee housing — with no guidance, no roadmap, and all my bags strapped to me like an anxious snail. I was placed in a shelter that turned out to be a converted juvenile prison. Charming. Slaughterhouse next door — smell of death every morning. Middle of nowhere — the nearest grocery store was a one-hour walk down the road.

The shelter was reserved for “problematic” refugees — folks kicked out of other shelters. Think untreated psychosis, prison history, aggression. It was not a vibe. I got a lot of bullying and physical threats as the one and only queer person there.

I tried to reconnect with the one person I knew in the country (an ex-partner), but he literally ran away from me in his car when I arrived. No hello. Just tires screeching — and then ghosting.

Had a breakdown then. Walked into a hospital and told them I wasn’t sure I’d survive the night. They gave me antidepressants — which I’d been begging for, so… win? I hadn’t been able to get my medication in the Netherlands before that.

Eventually I got a warehouse job ~16 km from my place (1 hour of cycling), started therapy (2 hours away), and got a bike. For a while, I was holding it together (with sugar and caffeine).

After a while, I found a queer bar in the nearest “big” city. Old, messy, beautiful. Started working there (as a paid volunteer — important detail). To do that, I left the dangerous shelter and lived in a tent next to a van belonging to a queer couple I befriended. Ate mostly supermarket soup and fruit picked from farms in the middle of the night (don’t tell anyone).

Never told the bar I was technically homeless. Too awkward. I just showed up clean and sparkly, like a well-adjusted cryptid. I was finally building something — people, purpose, place.

Then the government bann*d me from working “to protect me from labor exploitation.” I know, I know — so thoughtful. Then someone stole my bike — the one thing keeping everything together. And that was it. I couldn’t work, move, eat, go to therapy, or keep the tent going.

So I left. I returned to a war zone — because at least here, when things explode, you f*cking know why.

Three Months of Silence

When he finally resurfaced, it was with a voice I barely recognized and a video that said everything words could not. He had escaped the city, found a signal, and sent me a short, shaky clip: the school where he grew up, unrecognizable, its walls ripped open, the gym a crater, the windows like missing teeth.

He spoke quietly, the way people do when they’re walking through a place that should not exist. At one point he aimed the camera at a collapsed classroom and said: “Putin came here to free us from education.” It was bitter, exact, and truer than anything I could have written.

He didn’t film to be brave. He filmed to remember. To prove there had been desks here, and chalk, and a boy who used to copy homework badly and sprint for the football pitch at the bell. He filmed the absence so that it could not be denied.

“Putin came here to free us from education.” — Vitalii Nikitin
A line that explains a city’s ruins in ten words.

People asked me why I posted it. Because silence was killing us faster than noise. Because if a school can be turned to dust and no one sees it, it will happen again to another school, and another boy. Because it was the only way I knew to say: he survived, and this is what survival looks like.

I still don’t know how to end stories like this. Maybe the point is that they don’t end. The video is out there now, doing the work of a siren—loud enough for someone to hear, close enough to pull you back from the edge. That’s all we could ask from a phone held in shaking hands.

First Days — Live Reddit Updates

Post 0 — Vent

Sorry, but just need to vent somewhere right now. I am mtf transgender in Ukraine. My country was attacked this morning and I am laying on the ground each 5 minutes because of air ride sirens.

Photo Taken by me - exactly 24 hours before the War

Post 1 — Update from mtf in a middle of the war in Ukraine. I was trying to get a shelter in Poland. (Vent)

1-st update from mtf transgender from the war in Ukraine. How I was not able to cross the border (Re-uploaded with some important preliminary text, sorry)

First of all - I am truly thankful for your words of kindness, but don’t take my stories as a request for a pity. I just mentally in need to tell what is happening to me to probably only community which I know would fully support me for what I am. Please don’t be oppressed to feel sorry for me, that’s just not quite my point:)

The road to the border, which normally takes 2-3 hours, took 3 full days. At some point I started to feel like I was born in this traffic jam. That was fun overall. I was occasionally running ahead of the car to get some gas and food from overloaded gas stations, to cloak forbidden cars, and to wake up drivers that fell asleep before jam started to move a couple of inches further. We even uncovered a few crooks and took the border soldiers on them. I was trying to cross border by foot a couple of times, no luck. I hanged up by campfires a bit. Anyways, at the end I was not able to cross the Ukrainian side of the border at all, as a, ahem, male by passport. Ukraine dos not let those out. I was tossed from the border in below zero Celsius temperature with my cat. Car, on which I was having a ride, crossed the border, so no warm place anymore. Freezing, somehow I managed to hitchhike back to my city. Sad? Kinda, but I honestly have a bit less fear after all that.

Keep an eye if you are interested. I will continue later if you, brothers and sisters, are okay with it.

Post 1 — (Re-uploaded with preliminary text)

1-st update from mtf transgender from the war in Ukraine. How I was not able to cross the border (Re-uploaded with some important preliminary text, sorry)

Vent

First of all - I am truly thankful for your words of kindness, but don’t take my stories as a request for a pity. I just mentally in need to tell what is happening to me to probably only community which I know would fully support me for what I am. Please don’t be oppressed to feel sorry for me, that’s just not quite my point:)

The road to the border, which normally takes 2-3 hours, took 3 full days. At some point I started to feel like I was born in this traffic jam. That was fun overall. I was occasionally running ahead of the car to get some gas and food from overloaded gas stations, to cloak forbidden cars, and to wake up drivers that fell asleep before jam started to move a couple of inches further. We even uncovered a few crooks and took the border soldiers on them. I was trying to cross border by foot a couple of times, no luck. I hanged up by campfires a bit. Anyways, at the end I was not able to cross the Ukrainian side of the border at all, as a, ahem, male by passport. Ukraine dos not let those out. I was tossed from the border in below zero Celsius temperature with my cat. Car, on which I was having a ride, crossed the border, so no warm place anymore. Freezing, somehow I managed to hitchhike back to my city. Sad? Kinda, but I honestly have a bit less fear after all that.

Keep an eye if you are interested. I will continue later if you, brothers and sisters, are okay with it.

Post — Call for help (Vent)

Mtf transgender from Ukrainian war in touch. Please, brothers and sisters from the EU, I wrote some stories, but now I need your precise help!!

UPD: PROBLEM IS SOLVED, THANKS YO ALL

Mtf transgender from Ukrainian war in touch. Please, brothers and sisters from the EU, I wrote some stories, but now I need some exact help!

Please ask around if you know someone or someone knows someone from the press/aid/soldiers/people who will be going to Ukraine from Poland or Slovakia. I need them to hand me my document, which happened to be in POLAND without me. I can not get there. Please, my future depends now on this document.

Border

Post 2 — Day one in a hometown. *Felt* like a lazy day, lol (Vent)

Sorry I am not finding time to answer you all right now, you are amazing and I hope I will contact you all in the future and will make a lot of friends. I am mostly fine now, Please don’t be oppressed to feel sorry for me, that’s just not quite my point:)

So, Freezing, me, my cat and my wife was able to get back from the border to our hometown by hitchhiking. Because we did not had a sleep for a three days by that point, we just turned on music and slept for 12 hours ignoring the sirens. Next day, not sure what to do, we took all the extra stuff we had at home and brought it at humanitarian aid centre. After that we was buying a lot of stuff from working shops to also bring there. It’s a lot of refugees in need of help here. Simultaneously, I settled up my tech to attack attacks gov websites. Closer to night we “visited” catacombs which are being used as a bomb shelter. Originally it’s a historical site, and we was sitting by the amazing sarcophagus waiting air alert to end. At night we was packing bags and making plans to move further, using dim red flashlights (windows should not be lit during the curfew). lol, I will tell you why it was a bad idea in my next “article”.

I am one day behind writing this stuff with all of this to be honest. But I truly enjoy venting out my experience, please don’t feel offended and I hope we will stay in touch.

Requests For humanitarian Help