I have not been able to explain my sadness well lately. Each morning, as I wake up, I reach for water and Ukrainian news channels. My eyes run through the headlines as I anxiously scroll, checking how many people died today, how many were wounded, how badly, how many hospitals and schools suffered. How many more buildings and lives have been destroyed. How many weapons prohibited by Minsk agreements have been used by the hybrid Russian troops. On Feb. 19, fire was opened 136 times, out of which 116 times were from prohibited weapons. A soldier died; he was my brother's age. International and Ukrainian press were fired at along the border line. Sometimes separatists post videos, and I sardonically indulge myself in a wave of disinformation, addicted to fake news fed to people from the opposite side like a toxic drug.

I am privileged. I live in Kyiv, which means I have seen the war only through articles and United Nations statistics. I have met internally displaced people from Donbass, Shchastya, Horlivka and Belarus. But I have not experienced their pain of having to leave their home forever, because of being in danger on their own land. Now, I am scared I will have to experience this pain as well.

I have heard stories from my taxi driver, who had their own business in Donetsk and left everything behind after finding their four year old niece’s body parts in a shelled house. I spent hours talking to my friend’s roommates from Belarus, who are my age and who fled the regime after it became unsafe to reside in their country for the fear of dying or going to prison. I have seen the Russian side of my family break away and stop communicating after a heated debate about the war. I have seen my uncle in Russia go to prison and be fined his two-months income for protesting against the war and the imprisonment of political opponents.

Being a woman, when your country is on the brink of war, is paralyzing. As I go to sleep, I’m debating whether I’m ready to die for my country, whether I’m ready to defend it, whether I even know how to, or whether I will have to flee. Becoming a citizen of Russia, a country occupying my heritage, oppressing my origins and denying my identity, is out of the question for me. I wonder whether I can apply for asylum in case things get out of hand and my country does not exist anymore. Over the course of history, this has happened so many times, that I fear it is a real possibility. My friends and my mom have packed emergency bags, carrying money, documents and medicine, and left them by the front door.

Being so privileged all the way in the UAE is heartbreaking. I am wondering whether I deserve to be safe when people in Kyiv organize public events to learn how to stop gunshot bleeding or how to shoot. Or when my friends cry and have panic attacks. Or when my mom says she is convinced this is “the start of the end” and that she finally feels calm because she knows I’m “out of here.” It is terrifying to hear your own parents speak so calmly of the threat on their lives, and how their metric of danger is solely based on whether you, their child, is “out” of the invasion zone. It is terrifying to hear her tell me I should not worry if she stops responding, as they are expecting internet and communication outages and she is going to either leave to a farm with my aunt or to my brother’s in-laws’ house in the West. Or when the Kyiv administration updates shelter maps in case of bombing and publishes information about city sirens. I don’t want to learn how they sound.

When people at NYU Abu Dhabi, five hours on an airplane ride away from my home city, ask me how I’m doing, I don’t know what to say. When people approach me, as if I'm an expert on the geopolitical situation, and they want to discuss their personal opinions, I don’t know what to say. When people, with good intentions but unaffected by war, say, “I’m just interested to see how this plays out in the next few months”, I stand next to them, tensed up, silently nodding — it feels like my life depends on these next few months they speak about so carelessly.

I feel numb and I feel guilty for feeling numb, as if I am not suffering enough, caring enough, doing enough. I shake, learning that one of my friends sent me money, so that my mom can have it in case of the attack. When I see memes on the internet with affirmations “My country exists when I graduate”, I actually hope it is true.

Being born and raised in a free independent country means so little in a fragile state surrounded by blood seeking autocracies. When everything you disagree with is imposed upon you, and everything you stand for might be taken away in seconds. Freedom of speech, right to vote, right to disagree, right to call myself a Ukrainian. When I do not know if my house will still be there in a month, because I live next to a military base in Kyiv, which is most likely to be bombed first.

At a conference in Munich on Feb. 19th, President Voldomyr Zelensky gave a great speech, part of which I would like to share,

How am I? How is my family? The degree of my wellbeing became relative over the years since the beginning of war in 2014, in comparison to those affected more. My personal metric is to think about kids whose fathers died at the front line, uncles who find the body parts of nieces’ in the bombed ruins of a house, people who lose their whole livelihood, their business and become dirt poor because of the war. People who lost everything. Compared to them, I have nothing to say.

Does it mean I am fine if I am incapable of answering this question? Probably not. One privilege I don’t have is being unaffected. But it is so difficult to explain the tension that buzzes at the back of my mind while I go about my day and wait. The constant ringing in your ear, hypersensitive to the sounds of rockets setting off hundreds of miles away, and sirens turning on in the city I was born in.

I am not fine. And neither should you be.