I am back in Kyiv. It is very very cold, and everyone is on edge.
Electricity, heating and water are on and off, and who knows how much more the infrastructure can handle. If the evil Russians successfully strike more of the heating plants and electricity stations, then God knows how people are going to make it until the end of winter.
I am happy to be in Kyiv in our home here, but I feel alone. Perhaps it is the cold weather. Perhaps it is the mood. Perhaps it is the world. No one seems to care. I am sure people do care, but Ukraine certainly doesn’t get enough support. If they did, people would not be suffering like this. Children and the elderly are having a very difficult time. The country is exhausted. People are worried. The word “apocalypse” often comes up in conversation.
I was reading an update from an inspired writer I follow from the Kyiv Independent – I am cutting and pasting her words here :
“The resilience narrative is a trap. Not the idea itself – the actual daily practice of continuing under impossible conditions. That’s real, and it’s necessary, and we’re doing it because there’s no alternative. What’s dangerous is the way that word gets deployed by people watching from safety to make sense of our suffering. It’s a heroic term, an honorable one even.
But like all words that get used too much, it starts to obscure more than it reveals.
When you read about Ukrainian resilience, I need you to know: none of us here are doing okay. We are functioning, which is not the same thing. We go to work because rent is still due. We go to parties because the alternative is staring at walls, waiting for the next air raid siren. We maintain relationships, pursue careers, argue about restaurant choices, complain about traffic – all the ordinary friction of life continues because if we stopped to fully metabolize what’s happening, we would dissolve. We would become puddles of grief on the floor, unable to move, and that’s not a metaphor. That’s a real possibility we each avoid through sheer force of will and the accident of having obligations that won’t wait.
On top of every wartime worry – where is the person I love, will the power stay on, will that sound be thunder or something worse – people still carry all the peacetime worries too. The difficult neighbors, the failing relationships, the aging parents, the children who won’t sleep, the bills they can’t pay. The war doesn’t pause these problems, it just makes them harder to solve and less appropriate to mention in certain social circles.
So we continue. Not because we’re resilient, but because stopping means drowning, and we’ve decided – collectively, stubbornly, perhaps foolishly – that we’d rather stay afloat until the day we can finally breathe again.
That day comes when the Kremlin burns. Not metaphorically. Not diplomatically. Actually burns.
Until then, we tread water and call it living.”
It is totally surreal being here now. I will share more thoughts soon.
PrettyApt 