Your efforts to maintain some sense of normalcy are inspiring
Oh, nothing felt normal here in years. So it is not normalcy I'm trying to maintain, it's the sense that I am a human being with a free will and choice in this world, and that another world is possible. War and fascism tend to shrink your sense of the world and being in the world, and what other perspectives look and feel like. You can very easily become a stranger to yourself and drown in doom scrolling and getting in your own head. I'm actively trying to fight it and I've been asking myself repeatedly how can I stay humane in this madness. A singer I love wrote that we are surrounded with so much death, and we must actively seek beauty and art. He's not wrong. It's a human necessity.
It also helps with remembering that others are human as well and deserve to be treated as such, no matter who they are and what they've done. It works fairly well most times with most people, though honestly, I can only apply this for most of my government by ignoring 99% of what they're doing and saying and praying that some aspects of their humanity are not completely lost and may be regained in the long prison sentences I hope they'd get.
I am surprised you even have to take the TOEFL, you’re going to crush it.
Aww, thank you. Being here for years surely helped (take that, anti-screen people!). I booked a test in a test center because not all places accept home tests results, but I don't think I'll be able to go there if the war continues - it's in a different city and over a 90 minutes ride, and that ride alone can be dangerous.