Poets are the most courageous people I know. I’m fine with writing poetry, as long as no one ever reads it. But I have friends who dare to read their poetry out loud – it makes me gasp every time, not only because it’s beautiful, but with a sheer force of their vulnerability.

I am reading Elena Kostyuchenko’s I love Russia. Kostyuchenko is an award-winning investigative journalist from Russia, a LGBT+ activist and a dissident. I saw her book at the library and thought “this is a really bad idea,” then I thought “I don’t have to love it, I don’t even have to care, but if I really want to believe in reconciliation, I have to at least try to listen.” See, what I learned is that reconciliation is always, always personal. Like any practice, it has to be holistic or it won’t mean anything at all. If I want to practice reconciliation, I cannot avoid of thinking about it in the context of Ukraine and Russia. This is still a very uncomfortable truth.

So, I started reading Kostyuchenko and haaving very conflicting feelings about it. I read the English translation – on the one hand it makes the whole experience surreal and alienating, seeing all familiar names in latin transcription, on the other hand it takes the edge off all the triggering material. I don’t think I would have managed to read it in Russian without breaking down. It also makes me understand why they keep supporting the war. In the hopeless, drunken and violent reality Kostyuchenko describes who would care about anyone’s life? Seriously, this book is not particularly trying to terrify and thus is thoroughly terrifying. At this point, I don’t feel sympathy for the people she describes, but I do feel some flicker of understanding.

I wanted to add the book to my “currently reading” list on Goodreads and got scared. What if my Ukrainian friends decide that I fraternize with the enemy? What if it triggers them? What if me reading the book will be interpreted as tacit approval of russian liberals? Again, through my own experience, I realize there is no common ground to stand on. And I don’t know where we can go from here.