My name is Dimitri, I’m 25, and I work in the IT support team of a small company here in Narva. Most of my classmates left — Tallinn, Tartu, Finland. I stayed. Not because it’s easy, but because someone has to.

I like this city. It’s rough, but it’s real. When you cross the bridge in the morning, you see the old Hermann fortress on one side, and Russia already on the other. Between them flows the river — like a memory you can’t let go of.

I earn less than my friends in Tallinn, sure. But here I have my family, my language, my neighbors. I speak Estonian well enough to manage, and Russian — because that’s the language I think in. Sometimes it feels like I’m running two operating systems in my head: one for work, one for life.

The government says Narva needs to be “integrated.” But what does that even mean? We’re already here. We work, we pay taxes, we send our kids to school. What’s missing is trust — on both sides. Many Estonians don’t trust us, and some of us don’t trust the state. But in daily life that doesn’t matter much: at the shop, at the doctor’s, on the bus — people just talk to each other.

I see young people leaving, but I also see a few coming back. They bring new ideas, small companies, cafés, start-ups. Maybe it will take time, but I believe Narva can grow again if people stop seeing us only as a problem.

I’m staying — not because I’ve given up on dreams, but because I believe that dreams need roots, too.

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