I am still not a poem

Do I deserve to feel anything? To react? More and more I find myself pondering about that. In the beginning, it was just small glimpses, moments or even fractures of those moments. This week someone asked me how I was and I responded that I find it super difficult to answer that question ever since the war (in Ukraine) started. There was a pause where I exhaled still not knowing how to answer but it was met with a quick “but you are not Ukrainian” which lead me to a more perplexing moment of reflection and questioning it again and again. Do I deserve to have feelings? Do I deserve to react? Do I deserve to own that part of my reality?

I am not Ukrainian. Not even a little bit. I am not fleeing the war. I am only doing my little bits to support those people who are. Ukrainian or not. This was or another one. I have been doing it ever since I was 16 years old starting with the fleeing people from the ex-Yugoslav war to North Africa, Syria, Eastern Turkey or the Caucasus. Is it a privilege? Is it a choice? Is it a human obligation to do the best I can? Everything of both and something else?

With the passing time I have more and more questions. I also hear more and more questions, opinions, and reflections. I think about the privilege. About the time we have not to consider the privilege. The opportunities we forget are privileged. And it startles me in moments when a simple question can become paralizing and so confronting. And it’s not about comparison. At least not to me. There will always be someone who feels worse than you. Someone who is less alive than you. There will always be also someone who is better off.

A close friend of mine says she wants to think about everything in the terms of water - if there is a flow, there is a reason. And indeed, water is something that we are not only made of. Eyeball is the human organ that contains most water in comparison. It only makes sense to perceive the world through that watery perspective. And I keep also reminding myself that we live not to avoid uncomfortable conversations, confronting questions, challenging situations, deep cuts. I keep telling myself that all those things are only the proof of the meaning, resilience, lessons, quests and love. This is how I am learning about the touch. Touch of reality mostly. Mine and otherwise. I read somewhere that people only become real when they have an opportunity to share their noise or their silences with others. John O’Donohue who wrote a book called Anam Cara, said friendship is one of the most beautiful places where longing reaches its original fulfillment, and then deepens, purifies and changes. People only become real when they share their authenticity. When they share authentically. One needs a lot of courage to do so. I should know.

At the moment I still feel like I am collecting stories, pictures, fragments of what reach my eyeballs. I am still far away from being a poem - light, effortless and holding space. I divide the silences in diminutives. I think of suffixes to escape the fear of talking in public. How do you touch another world and don’t become part of it? That takes a lot of courage. I should know. To touch another world, another reality and to allow yourself to breathe because in order to verbalise it all you don’t need verbs.