Chapter Eight
Words do not come so easily as they once have
I am distracted
by nothing
been waiting for Gadot.
Whenever the sirens go off, I now feel the fear I didn’t feel before, a wailing sense of trepidation.
I worried not about the missiles, drones, or mortars, for a long while - for myself at least.
Didn’t think much of it for some time as I came here partially desensitized to the threat of imminent danger, a result of living life,
I imagine.
Such difficulties are amplified in Ukraine; friends worrying for their loved ones, daily news of massive attacks on civilian populations, children's hospitals, universities, parks, elementary schools, oncology wards, grain shipments, anyone alive, all fair game.
While I was volunteering in Avdiivka in the second week of November 2023, the ruzzians targeted our van while we were en route for an evacuation. They don't care, no symbol represents non-combatants for them, they are programmed only for absolute obliteration. During this summer, they blew up the country’s largest children’s hospital, Ohmatdyt, sent rocket after rocket, drone after drone, and set off the school year with a massive attack across all regions.
And it was only a couple of months ago when the ruzzians blew the head off a 14-year-old girl sitting on a bench in Kharkiv,
all the while having continuously kidnapped children and murdered them, men, and women all across the country since the beginning of this “Special Military Operation.” Here, the most innocent are not spared but consistently targeted with strikes designed to crush the spirit. All this grew and grew in thought, and with this terror reverberating through my body and mind, I have grown increasingly tired.
Perhaps it's disingenuous to say so, knowing that 370 kilometers away, Ukrainians and other volunteers are fighting in the trenches for 20, 30 hours non-stop, soiling themselves and functioning on nothing but ‘just cause’ to provide the world with security that it cannot comprehend as it continues to dick around while Ukraine endures Europe's worst genocide since the Second World War.
And here I am. In Kyiv. On my balcony, drinking.
Wishing it was time for sleep thinking of how to continue to harness the
motivation to write, to wake up,
to acknowledge that I'm not okay in this
and move forward.
The incense of my neighbor keeps me in check tonight.
Floral.
I still feel a shard of glass that had broken off from a larger piece that I had jammed into my big toe by accident. I'll have to cut it out.
Buildings are being built in the distance, the cranes slowly sway and bow.
In the other direction, the construction zones have sheet metal barriers with pro-park anti-corruption slogans, I’d imagine that those in the distance share the same.
The first time I came here, two years after the war began in 2014, there were still ruzzian state-owned banks with protestors camping outside, plazas whose walls were adorned with photos of the fallen in the war out East, and assassinations in the city center of the capitol - just from my experience. Even as Ukrainians tell me, the war seemed far away then, with refugees feeling alien even in their own country.
Nowhere is safe now, everyone here has been affected by this genocide and they all continue to persevere.
It’s unclear to me whether it is the argument that is causing me to feel this way, the tension built up over my time from living in a country at war, relationships, my past, and the pains left unacknowledged, but I know that I used to listen to music, that I didn’t mind walking the streets or spending time for things outside myself.
It’s hard to tell sometimes whether the sounds I hear are explosions or my neighbors bumping into the wall or dropping something, it’s a feeling eerily similar to when I was growing up and would hear loud thuds in the morning, not knowing whether they were out of anger or by unawareness.
I know now that I am scared.
I've lost a great deal of camaraderie,
dreams,
positivity,
hope, desire,
opportunities,
freedom, and strength.
I’ll have to walk this glass out of my foot, been there for a few days, gonna need to put some kilometers in until it shimmies its way out.
Also, I am, in some way, waiting, perhaps stuck in someone else's foot, taking note of the number of times I’ve been walked all over.
Look at your game girl!
Your art of suffocation!
All the red lines that took control, took what little I had left.
I have become the victim of your finest project.
A roommate
Pet sitter
Place holder
Emotionally deceased
The subject of your artistic dreams!
When you said “Hello” to me in the kitchen, I heard the sirens,
had to look down at my feet so that they’d lead me away.
It’s the air that becomes more cumbersome
as I continue to understand its apathy to all things not of the self.
It's a force that I’m not sure how to reason with; it’s everywhere in front of me,
in all directions where my eyes move.
The sadness can be seen as particulate matter rising from bombed apartments,
from the hollowed emotionless faces of the littered streets and forest paths; mine,
mirrored by the black water.
I am still lost; I was once too afraid to admit it, feeling like I was an imposter too far gone from the tasks at hand - thought I was always winging it.
No matter where I went, my mind always went other ways.
Did my best to control it, not sure it worked,
at least in my favor.
Peace
is something that I desire, been fighting for it, in and out of myself, for quite some time. Moments of solitude are seldom, usually with the road East to the front, or in the embrace of,
what once was;
much like the bottle laid to rest.
Feelings of suppression have increased for quite some time, I no longer enjoy what I used to; I am without a desire to share my art, I have lost the reason to make, music has vanished from my ears, the world beyond my flat no longer exists, I am not speaking to friends and have no inclination to reply to their words, all I want is sleep, I forget to eat, I am not writing, I am only working, and the people I see when I look into the mirror, I look at with contempt.
If this is who I am
when I am with them,
then this is not who I want to be
when I am with myself.
And I think about this man I am, conjectured on the balcony, a pack of smokes in, waiting
for the sun to set, realizing that the kid is living for the hedonistic pleasures of escapism amid a lifelong battle with himself and what my brain is set to seek despite the gradually worsening consequences dancing along the frontlines of self-induced misery.
I am leaving.