Where do I stand?

I am distraught.

Do I stand with the thousands who call Ukrainian Village home, my favorite neighborhood in my favorite city? Where the outspoken swarm the CTA Blue Line station at Harlem, urging the world to stop Putin? Where the frantic cling to their phones, desperate to hear from their relatives still in Ukraine: are they alive, and will they flee their homeland? Radio silence.

With the curators of the Ukrainian National Museum and Ukrainian Institute of Art, the first generation Ukrainian Americans who cannot believe that their country, which has been through so much – the Holodomor, struggle for independence, and the Revolution of Dignity, to name a few things – must fight to survive yet again?

Do I stand with the hundreds lingering amidst the rain and pitch darkness in Washington D.C., where one protestor spray painted “MURDER” on the same sidewalk from which I, starry-eyed, snapped a photo of the Russian Embassy only months ago?

Where I felt triumphant yet disconnected as I struggled to assert myself during a successful passport appointment, unsure of which mental box I should check: too American, or not Russian enough? Or both? Should I even want to identify as Russian anymore?

Do I stand with the dozens of brave souls willing to risk their lives in Yekaterinburg, my city of birth, a town I can only pretend to know, where my biological relatives, whom I will probably never meet and whose tongue I can barely speak, still live? Where saying “no” to an authoritarian regime’s assault on a sister country, freedom, and humanity means being detained?

Or do I stand alone, trying to selfishly turn a global crisis into something about me?

How can I care about being shut out from my birth country and its culture by not only my own parents but now Putin, who has foiled my plans to visit Russia, when innocent Ukrainians simply trying to live their lives must learn how to concoct Molotov bombs? How can I care about potentially not being able to travel to Germany, a trip I have wanted to take for nearly half my life, when Russian troops capture Kiev as I now write this from the comfort of my own apartment rather than a cold underground subway station?

The truth is that I don’t know where I stand. I never will. But I do know where I don’t stand: with Putin.