Paths Without Shadow Today marks three years since the world around me shattered, cracked, and fell apart into pieces. I left everything—my homeland, the touch of familiar winds, the smell of coffee by the Dnipro river in a thermos after a bike ride, footprints on snow-covered streets. Everything that once seemed unshakable turned into an illusion of stability, which vanished in an instant. I wander across the world. Countries change like seasons, cities accept me, but they cannot hold me. I am always in between: between the past and the future, between foreign languages, between searching for a home that is no longer a point on the map, but a state of the soul. There is a theory in quantum physics: reality unfolds each time a decision is made. Somewhere, in a parallel world, I am still at home, sitting in “my” kitchen, talking with friends, breathing the same air. But here and now, my reality is an endless road. Nostalgia is not only about a lost home but also about a lost version of oneself. I am no longer the person I was three years ago. In every foreign city, it feels like I am trying to reconstruct myself from fragments, to create new meaning, a new point of reference. But what color is this new reality? The hardest part is the smells. The scent of fresh bread can suddenly take me back to the streets of my city, where people still lived ordinary lives. Or the sound of morning rain—it seems the same as back home, yet lifeless, as if it doesn’t recognize me. I used to think that freedom was the ability to travel. Now I understand that true freedom is the ability to return. We, the ones who left, have become people with open borders but closed hearts. The roads are open, but is there anywhere to go? I think about what it means to be a person without geographical roots. If a tree is uprooted, can it survive on foreign soil? Can a person become like the wind—without a home, but ever-present everywhere? War is a break in reality. A point of no return. I know that even if I ever return, it will never be the same as it was. But isn’t that the law of the universe? Everything changes. I hold within me two opposing forces: one that longs to return everything to how it was, and the other that pushes me to build a new version of myself. Is this the quantum coexistence of being? To be both there and here, simultaneously? What comes next? I am learning to accept instability as a form of life. Perhaps a true home is not a place, but a feeling within? Maybe I am no longer a citizen of one country, but a citizen of all the cities where I cried, laughed, and learned to pronounce new words? But today, I allow myself to simply be a person who mourns a lost world. And let today be a reminder: even when the wind scatters us, we remain whole, for our true homeland is what we carry within us as DNA.