Life has been weirder than usual lately, and I have been in a state of constant overwhelm.
Protests to reinstall Fedorov as Ukraine’s Minister of Defense continue, likely to gather a bigger crowd towards the end of the week as the President comes back home. Fedorov is still out; the Parliament is ‘on vacation’. Not good. Iran is threatening a ballistic missile strike against Ukraine. Three missiles, in ‘retaliation’ for Ukraine hitting an Iranian cargo vessel in the Caspian Sea. Not good. russia has prepared for its next mass combined aerial strike against Ukraine. Not good. Another wave of hate crimes against Ukrainians in Poland. Not good. Far right assholes have been conducting a month-long campaign of threats and vandalism targeting the G×Bar chain over its open support for LGBTQ+ people. Not good. Winter is coming. Winter is expected, once again, to be worse than the worst of the worst winters we’ve had in the past years of the war. Not good. Ukraine is hitting Wildberries warehouses in russia and the 40-day deep strikes campaign continues. Good.
What does this onslaught of contextual updates mean to me?
Well. I conduct a daily balancing exercise between personal boundaries and the responsible-citizen (or even a still-surviving citizen) need to keep paying attention and taking action where possible. And lately, my mind and heart have been overcrowded with all this nightmare-vibes context. I live in this context. The text, the narrative of my one and only life, resides within this context. Awareness of it allows me to be prepared. Prepared for what? To be honest, for anything and everything, at this point.
I don’t ever stay in place; nothing stays in place, everything is so in flux that uncertainty is the only truest reality. Add to it the ‘usual’ ‘ordinary’ commitments to work and a semblance of productivity, elder family care responsibilities, bills, etc., etc. This little neolithic era brain gives up. This sleep-deprived, missile-attack-stressed body aches.
It’s not that I don’t know how to deal with my life. It’s not that I don’t know what it’s like to go through a ballistic missile attack; I lost count of how many attacks I’ve gotten through. I’ve been to numerous protests with various outcomes or the lack of any outcomes whatsoever. And, as a queer person, I am also used to being aware - ever vigilant - of the slow-burning, simmering hate from others - somewhere on the edge of where my private world and the wider world meet.
It’s the capacity to contain all of it that’s now wavering.
The intersectionality of my oppressed identities has overintensified. The inconvenience of the oppressed resisting stands there in the throat of russia choking on Ukraine. Insults against Ukrainians intensify and accumulate amongst our neighbors. Our existence offends and irritates. As hatred against Ukrainians reaches new heights in our neighboring countries, all this assault against the Ukrainian identity just shifts focus away from the realness of russian hostility.
Meanwhile, there is a double, triple burden on each of us Ukrainians: to carry our past, to survive the present, and to secure the future. That’s a lot. Heck, just surviving the present is a lot. Lots of eager voices out there keep telling Ukrainians what we should be doing, what we ought to be doing, what we must do differently. But, oftentimes, we’re just doing what each of us can.
Vilnyi Vybir has a poster about boundaries that you can get for a donation. Of course I got it and put it up on the wall in my apartment. A person sitting cross-legged, drawn in a thin outline. Everything inside the body is what I can control. My own thoughts and words, care for myself and my resources, boundaries in communication with others; what I allow people to know about me. Sleep, food, movement, how much news I consume, hobbies, my circle of support. The decisions I make today. How I react to events.
Everything outside the body is what I cannot control. Other people’s behavior, words, emotions, thoughts, and the consequences of their decisions. Information pressure. Sudden changes. Uncertainty. Past events. Past losses. The future. Time. And news.
In war, protecting one’s peace is quite impossible, and yet, that’s literally part of the task - to protect one’s peace. Preservation of what’s within the boundaries is political. What’s within the boundaries is being assaulted by the enemy - there’s an assault on sleep, on being able to meet basic needs, on food, on our perception. All of it is being tested now and pushed to the limit.
In Ukrainian, we say особисті межі, personal boundaries. We also say на межі, at the limit, at the edge. The boundary and the breaking point are sort of the same location. While feeling at the limit, I am returning to this reminder about boundaries: I forgive myself for being imperfect, for the discrepancies between how I’d hoped my day would go and my actual days. On this poster, the past is outside the outline. The future is outside the outline. Only today’s decisions are within my boundaries. This actual day is so overwhelming and imperfect. These actual days, however, are threading themselves into my life, one by one.
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