Chapter Three - A Look into the Future
11/10/2023
Dear Diary, as I write about my past, I realise that I need to be communicating with this diary here in the present day also. Although I guess to anyone reading my diary, the future.
I've done it, I've booked my next trip to Ukraine. I'll be flying into Poland tomorrow morning. It's a little after midnight here now and I'm extremely anxious this evening. I fly from London Stansted, I also booked a train down there from Manchester but I used a virtual debit card on my bank and I need a physical debit card they say online to pick it up.
Honestly ever since I returned to the UK from my fifth trip to Ukraine this year, I feel like I've been thrown into a cage. It feels as though some horrible, negative and almost volatile force is trying to send me crazy here. I literally feel so trapped right now in the UK.
So much is going wrong. I'm not even talking about myself personally, I mean with the entire world. It's kicking off badly now in Israel and Palestine. A terrorist group launched an attack into southern Israel. Some shocking stuff in the news with people being kidnapped and many people murdered. It's awful.
I wanted to write about this in here, because honestly, with the problems in the world at the moment, one mans problems may seem small in comparison. But as it's likely someone will read my diary it's important to convey other information in the world around me.
Coming back to my anxiety, it's being stemmed from another potential issue facing me at the moment. I've so many potential issues now taking this next trip into Ukraine. But honestly, I am at a point where I do not care anymore. I've lost everything in this country, everything I held so dear to me. But now I have something new and I'm going to go and do my best to help it and protect it.
I am going to go back to Ukraine, I am ready to take a bigger plunge into what needs to be completed over there. I can be of some use over there.
In the UK I have become useless, exiled from Ireland, not able to see my children anymore, locked into a small box room which feels like a cage back in Manchester. Nah mate, I'm not going out like this. I'm ready to push this to the absolute limit now. I'm going back to Ukraine and I'm going to fight for what I believe in, fight for those who throughout this year have looked after me, not just as a friend, but as a brother.
I really don't want to write here right now the entire backstory of the issues facing me right now, but I've had a lot of issues with the mother of my children, which absolutely sucks. I won't sit here and put blame on the mother of my children though, nor myself to be honest. I'm not here to air dirty laundry that we all experience in life on a personal level. We all know the score with this stuff and honestly, it just really sucks that it has come to this.
Right now my situation is I'm back in Manchester and unable to go too Belfast. I have been working since my return to Manchester. I managed to get some time in with my children for a few days upon my return to Belfast last month though.
Right now I've been in Manchester for a few weeks, but it's at breaking point for my mental health. I've honestly never felt so low in this place before, in this country I grew up calling home. I'm so disillusioned with it all now.
Every return trip to the UK, each time back home has gotten more negative and more toxic, all around me. Not just my own personal problems, but everything around me.
What has spurred me to get back to Ukraine sooner than I had originally planned is simple. My sanity, my mental health. Ukraine has been the biggest help to my mental health. It's mad that I am saying that, I know it is, but a lot of people from my country haven't been on the ground in Ukraine, they haven't seen the fight for survival. The struggle for freedom. The amazing people still trying to live the most normal life they can.
When I come back to the UK, I feel like a pawn on a chessboard that just gets kicked to the side of the board... believe me, I am at a point where I need to grow back into a person again and stamp on the chessboard.
My problems are one of many on the chessboard, I'm not the only pawn. We get to that point in life where we need to stop being a pawn. Some of us make it to the other end of the board and get crowned, so we keep playing the game, but we need to wake up and stop playing. We just need our moment in life where we finally stand up and this is my moment now. So I'm putting my all into this volunteer work in Ukraine. I'll do whatever it takes now. I won't even say it's all I have left, whilst I've lost everything in the UK, what I've gained in Ukraine is so very special to me. I'm so excited to get back, see my friends and help people.
As for elaborating on the issues I'm facing in the UK... that's for another day. I'm going to finish this entry and get some sleep now.
Tomorrow I start my sixth journey back to Ukraine.
Nanight Diary!
