Am I ok? That is the question.

This week, the Ukrainian playwright Polina Polozhentseva writes about how to react to well-meaning questions from foreigners, while your flat at home in Ukraine is being bombed.

BY POLINA POLOZHENTSEVA

In truth, I’m not quite sure what reaction I want to see from my foreign friends regarding the events in Ukraine.

I posted a few photos after the shelling in Kyiv on the night of June 16-17 to my Instagram stories today. Now, the statistics are crystal clear: a story with a photo of my legs on the bed garnered 540 views, whereas my first story about the shelling of Kyiv received 500, the next one 100, the one after that 40, and the last one just 20. I can’t blame them; I do the same with my friend’s stories from Israel (and she’ll probably read this and promptly unfollow me 😂). Her pain looks to me like photographs of similar houses on fire.

I asked another Israeli colleague, a playwright, “How are you?” She replied, “Relatively okay, but I can’t even remember when ‘just okay’ was the norm.” I told her I felt the same.

However, when a British customer at the café in London where I work asked me, “How are you?” I felt an overwhelming irritation brewing inside. Then I thought, ‘What kind of person does that make me? She meant no harm.’

We normally reach this question with every café visitor after two preliminary inquiries:

“Where are you from?”

“How long have you lived in England?”

Upon hearing “a little over three years,” we finally get to “How are you?” (sometimes it’s “How’s your family in Ukraine?”).

If I’m particularly chatty and elaborate on my answer, they might even ask, “Are you planning to return home?”

I pondered for a long time why these inquiries irritate me (aside from the fact that I might get asked them twenty times a day) and concluded that people don’t genuinely want to know the truth. They want to hear I’m happy, grateful, safe, and saved from the war. If I start lamenting, it makes them uncomfortable.

Last month, a Russian missile hit the building next to my apartment in Zaporizhzhia (that’s Eastern Ukraine, where I’m from). All my windows and interior doors blew out. “How am I?”

At that moment, my friend, who checks in on me periodically, was at my place. He was hiding behind two walls in the toilet (we in Ukraine often joke about those ‘two walls’ - you should have two walls between you and the windows - which probably wouldn’t protect anyone from a direct hit anyway).

“How am I?” I asked him if he needed help cleaning up the glass; he replied that it was already curfew, and none of my friends could come anyway.

“How am I?” And then the interesting story begins - there’s a free government program for housing recovery in Ukraine, but to get into it, I need to go to Zaporizhzhia. You can’t register online. The logic seems simple: housing is restored first for those who live in the country. But what about me - a property owner living abroad with a child, just wanting to preserve my property? Everyone probably knows what can happen to a home with no windows when winter comes.

So how am I? Am I okay?

In reality, I want to tell the aforementioned British customer about all this. But he expects something short and positive in return. The story about my windows is unlikely to brighten his day.

I might even end up in tears (this tends to happen in the most inappropriate places). And sometimes, I must confess, I envy the residents of other countries (not just Britain) because they have the illusion of a future. Why do I say ‘illusion’? Because I saw in 2022 how quickly everything can shatter into a million pieces.

But having an illusion is still better than having nothing. With an illusion, you fall asleep peacefully, wake up with a smile, plan vacations, or set financial independence goals for your seventieth birthday. Without an illusion, you look at the world as if through aquarium glass. My future is now known for a year and a half, as I proudly hold a temporary Ukrainian visa. What comes next is a mystery. There’s been no news about extending the stay for Ukrainians in Britain.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and ask myself roughly the same set of questions. How am I? Do I want to return to Ukraine? I start searching for answers within myself and find none. Because the most honest one is, ‘I don’t know.’ I’m neither bad nor good. It feels like my range of basic emotions has shrunk. I’ve stopped worrying about the shelling in my hometown and have ceased to empathize with the grief of others (sounds dreadful, I know); what genuinely concerns me now is the survival of me and my daughter.

I can’t even imagine what reaction to the news from my foreign friends would satisfy me. I don’t like it when they scroll past my stories or send emotional support messages.

Sometimes, I don’t even want people to know I'm from Ukraine. Because if you say you’re from Poland, they start asking where the best places to visit in Krakow are or for cherry pirogi recipes.

How am I? Just a Polish person working abroad who came to England to earn a living. Oh, and I have a flat with windows.

Polina Polozhentseva is a Ukrainian playwright living in London. Her plays are full of humor, although audiences sometimes don't laugh - because 'you can't laugh about war, can you?' With Polina, we are adding the perspective of a Ukrainian woman, mother, refugee and barista abroad to our blog. Hopefully you will enjoy her sometimes irreverent musings.