Update: The anxiety of impending danger. The feeling when a sharp pencil is near a balloon and the tension you feel before it pops. The second before a champaign cork is to be popped. That moment after a firework lights up and you wait for the BOOM. You tense up, your heart skips a beat. Your adrenaline pumps, you are ready to flinch at any moment. You know to expect something, but you don’t know how bad it will be, or the instant it will happen. This is the feeling everyone in Ukraine has been experiencing, except in a long, tortured week after week, month after month ordeal. Occasionally, the loud noise has happened. At times the result has been celebratory, and other times, it has been completely horrifying. Any one of these many events would reshape a country, yet these events have been happening to Ukraine in four short months, in a succession of hardships, losses, and small victories. Yet, despite this constant undertow of anxiety about Russian invasion, new government, instability, falling value of the currency, and future economic hardships, life goes on. It has the illusion of normalcy. Everyone shops at the grocery store just as they did before. People play sports, go to dances and concerts, and celebrate birthdays and holidays. The difference is, when you’re not lost in the moment you always return to this anxiety. After a concert, everyone checks their phones for news. When people get home from the market, they check the news. As soon as you wake up, you check the news. It is not easy living in a constant state of possible war. Yet, it’s impossible to escape, so you must go on. Everyone does what they can to try and make a difference, even if everyone is powerless to control Russia’s military might hovering across the border ready to invade at a moment’s notice. Some light candles. Some make videos. Others talk and talk with everyone about it. Some sign up for the military. Others don’t talk about it because they don’t want to jinx anything. Me… I try to reach out to Americans. I write my facebook updates, I skype with American high school and middle school classes with Ukrainian teenagers. I tell Ukrainians about the support they have in America. – At the end of the day none of this changes anything, but its therapeutic, cathartic, and a true necessity to feel some control in a situation in the hands of so few, with the trigger being held by one man who thinks in terms of historical legacy and geopolitical power struggle, but never about the millions of individual lives held hostage by the fear it produces. I wouldn’t call this feeling the fear of the unknown, but maybe the fear of the possibilities. What has happened already shows that many unthinkable things are possible and can happen. What we all hope for here, is that the sharp pencil is taken away from the balloon. We hope we can trouble our minds with more trivial things. We also know things can get worse, but at least the balloon will have popped and we’ll be free from our old anxieties, but likely left with new ones. I’ve learned that living in constant fear is not necessarily constant, but the fear ebbs and flows uncontrollably. There are plenty of escapes from the fear, but if you are away from that fear too long it comes back stronger and sharper. Everyone handles it differently, but right now, everyone has it looming over them. I hope I can shed light on how it really is in Ukraine right now. When you read the news abroad you’re able to empathize, perhaps, but you can never understand the constant and tiresome struggle with fear and anxiety that every single person in a country of 45 million is experiencing. When you’re done reading an article, you’ll go on with your day. When someone here in Ukraine finishes an article it stays with them all day long, hanging over their heads and tucks itself into bed with them at night. That article is joined by other articles, conversations, videos, interviews, and rumors, constantly around, ready to invade their mind to remind them about that sharp pencil next to a balloon, and they tense up and their heart skips a beat again, and again.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 09:05:11 +0000
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