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Hi, I don't like to come on here and be serious but I just wanted to put this out there since not a lot of people check blog DNIs before interacting anymore and ive had a huge problem with proshippers/darkshippers along with political blogs interacting, so:

-If you post or reblog political content of ANY kind, please do not interact with this blog!!

-If you are a Proshipper/Darkshipper or reblog anything related to proshipping/darkshipping please do not interact with this blog!!

-this also goes for Thinspo/ED blogs, I don't think this one needs to be explained

I have had a MASSIVE problem recently with my DNIs interacting with my posts, I understand that in fandom/fantasy spaces there are a lot of these subjects, but please, be respectful, it's a basic boundary. If you don't respect these boundaries you WILL be blocked.

This story is shaped as a brief inner monologue, in which physical reality and inner experience are constantly interwoven. It tells of a man I have known for years, exclusively through the internet. We share thoughts about life and speak about what occupies our minds. Despite the war in Ukraine, our contact has never been broken. In fact, under those circumstances, our friendship has endured and gained meaning. As a tribute to that, I have put his story to paper. This is Ivan’s story.

The Last Watcher of the Frost

My name is Ivan, twenty-nine years old, and sometimes it feels as though I am the last one turning off the lights in a city deep in Russia, where the cold never truly leaves. There was no dramatic collapse, no great explosion, only a quiet, slow decay that meets your eyes every morning, as the frost scratches at the windows and the emptiness in my chest grows heavier.

My mother died when I was still a child. She vanished from my life before my memory could truly hold her touch. I have no recollection of the gentle pressure of her arms or the safety of her lap; she is a faint scent of flowers and soap dissolved into the winter air. My father and my only brother never returned from the war in Ukraine. No letter, no body, only an official notice that lodged in my throat like ice. There is no one else. I am the sole bearer of a name no one speaks anymore.

The Silence of the Skin

On top of all that, I carry a secret that in this town is seen as betrayal: I am attracted to men. In a place where walls have ears and silence itself is always judging, my desire has become an underground current. It is a loneliness that goes beyond the absence of company; it is a deep, physical starvation. I am twenty-nine years old, and my skin is still uncharted territory, a map on which no one has ever set foot.

I do not know the living warmth of another body. My father and brother were men of wood and steel, who showed their love through silence and hard work, never through an embrace. Sometimes, lying in bed, I place my own hand against my neck, just to feel the warmth of my skin transfer, but it is a meager comfort that only makes the cold more apparent.

Dawn as an Excuse

In the mornings, I wipe the ice flowers from the window, and the light falls in like a pale, cold excuse. The street lies motionless beneath a thick layer of snow. Three houses down have stood empty for more than two years; the paint on the window frames peels away in long, pale curls that the wind carries off like dead skin.

When I step outside, the snow crunches beneath my boots. My neighbor is shoveling his stoop, a futile ritual against a sky that never stops giving. “Dobroe utro, Ivan,” he says, his voice rough from cheap tobacco. We exchange the names of those who succumbed during the night, to age or to drink. I nod, feel the frost creep through my socks, and swallow my tears.

There are no men my age left here. The boys I once secretly watched, their broad shoulders beneath thin shirts during those brief, sultry summers, are long gone. I have never felt a hand seeking mine in the morning, no rough stubble against my cheek, no voice that could melt the loneliness. That realization presses in on me every morning like a draft through a crack in the door.

A Dream in Technicolor

During the day, I work at the hardware store, selling nails to people desperately trying to shield their homes from the endless freezing cold. I earn just enough to avoid starving. Saving for a future elsewhere feels like a joke; every ruble disappears into the stove.

On my break, I scroll through my phone. There I see the world I know only from dreams: Amsterdam. I see photos of men walking hand in hand along the canals in the rain. Their lives feel like a film in technicolor, while mine is black-and-white and grainy, as if someone has turned down the sharpness. My sexual struggle is a constant battle: desire flaring up when I see a strong arm at the store, followed by the deep shame I feel alone in bed at night. When I touch myself, it is often with a bitter anger, a hurried attempt to break the tension that leaves me feeling only emptier.

I dream of a steady partner in that distant, green country. I imagine us cycling through the summer rain together, and how he would hold me in a warm bed until the inner frost finally leaves my bones. A place where my skin is finally allowed to come home.

The Keeper of the Museum

The evenings are the hardest. In the only bar still open, “The Golden Bear,” it smells of stale beer and missed chances. We drink in silence while the snow lashes against the windows. What am I still doing here? Do I stay out of loyalty to my parents, who endured the cold here all their lives, or am I simply too afraid to leave without a penny to my name?

Sometimes I feel like a museum guard in a building no one visits anymore. I watch over the memory of my first kiss behind the cinema, with a boy who long ago fled abroad, and the distant echo of my mother’s laughter in the kitchen. Yet the silence also holds something intimate. When the streetlights flicker on and the snow turns orange, I see the familiar silhouettes of the birch trees. Their branches creak softly, like the only voice that still knows me.

The danger is not loneliness itself. The danger is resignation, the moment when you stop longing for warmth because you have forgotten what it feels like. But somewhere, deep inside, a small flame still flickers. Perhaps it is time not to turn off the light, but to let it serve as a beacon. For myself. For the man I might be somewhere else. In The Netherlands, my dreamland, where winter is short and freedom is vast. Where cows graze in green fields and tulips grow. The land of Van Gogh and Rembrandt. That is where I want to be. The place where I no longer have to be a shadow, but a man of flesh and blood, held by someone who truly loves me.

(Written in Dutch and translated into English.)