A Larger Zombie

Something Else To Share…

Finally, I’m home.
I thought of writing something funny about what happened and my arrival but things have changed. Probably, this is going to be my most serious blog post.
I’ve lived in Moscow for some time before living in Ireland and many other places. So I can say Moscow is my home and where I feel most comfortable right now. It’s where everything began, too much to tell you at once.

The trip was exciting. It took me 2 days to get to Moscow from Dublin, going through London and Kiev. I’ve taken other, more complicated ways before but this time it was simpler.
Something extremely unusual (in my opinion) happened during my flight to Kiev. First time ever I saw a plane going parallel to mine for about 15 minutes. It had a black stripe following it instead of white. The plane was fine, going on the same height and speed as mine. Later, another plane came too close, passing by about 30 meters below mine! I’ve spent hundreds of hours working in planes or just traveling before but these occasions were something new for me.

I arrived to Domodedovo airport in Moscow – the one you might have recently heard about, 2 days before the teract on the 24th of January. Although, I wanted to arrive that same day, things went wrong. I’m glad they went wrong because the place where the explosion happened and the time were exactly the ones where and when I’d been. There’s rather small hall for getting baggage, a small tight corridor leading to another hall – all full of people. It took me about 30 minutes to collect my bags and slowly leave the airport.

Still unpacking things I heard the news and recognized the place of the explosion – international arrivals area. I was extremely shocked because of how close I was to all that. We, people, tend to perceive something more vividly once it’s somehow related to us. And now I’m happy to be alive more than ever.
May be it’s stupid to think of my own risks like “I could be there on that time” because there was the same chance for me to be there as for the terrorists not to be there. But it’s definitely sobering up. I’m alive. I wasn’t there at that moment. I flew “on the wrong date” and I’m happy with it. I was on that very spot and saw some people who’re probably dead or in the hospital at the moment. But I’m alive.

I go to bed each night thinking of tomorrow, believing that I’ll wake up tomorrow and live another day. But there’s no guarantee that tomorrow will come for me, that I’ll wake up. I promise mom to visit her “someday” or “do something _ someday” like if I was sure that I’d be there when “someday” arrives. Death topic is bitter and it’s often avoided. I catch myself thinking something like “It happens somewhere away from me, to someone else…” or “It can’t be so soon, I’m too young” – but it’s an illusion. It can equally happen at any time anywhere to anyone. Anything can happen any time. There’s equal danger of looking down from a cliff as looking down from a bed.

I’ve seen quite a few people die, taking their last breath, falling out of a window… And each time it sobered me up, reminded me that life isn’t forever. It sounds simple and everyone seems to know it. But what I felt in those situations was like knowing deeper. It’s something like a pushing force, to remind me not to waste time, to live fully right now, not crying for better times but doing all I can right now.
Life is the most precious treasure we have.