Hello, I am an exile!
It’s been already the second night of questions. The second night of longing for perfect answers. The second night of these deep conversations that I’ve been missing so much lately.
I notice, the more I speak Polish, the more I feel like an idiot.
I am incapable of speaking it in an appropriate way. So i can express my thoughts, the way I want them to be. I can´t play with words with the elegance and grace that I used to do in Russian.
And I have to admit that when your vocabulary is narrowed to less than 5000 words it is almost impossible to make people take you seriously.
What should I do with my life if I don’t want to do anything with it?
What should I do with my life if I have people who know what they want to do with my life?
How did I end up here? Why couldn’t I close my eyes and wake up somewhere else?
Somewhere where she calmly sleeps. And her dark, curly, long hair like poison snakes wander around the snow-white pillow. Why should we have an 8-hour time difference between each other? When we can make breakfast together instead?
Why couldn’t we just have coffee and then do with our life what we want to do with it? Just simply live it.
Why should we follow this morbid way of trying to make other people satisfied with our own decisions?
I guess there should be organization like anonymous alcoholics club. Where you can come and have your turn to just say, `Hello, I am Anna. I am an exile.` And then everyone will smile and say together, `Hello, Anna!`
It took me a really long time to realize that I love my city. My beautiful Saint Petersburg. The more I travel the more I can’t understand why couldn’t I just settle down there?
But I guess it started a long time ago. I remember this sunny morning in New York City. Everything was packed. Decisions were made. I had nothing to lose anymore. I was going back home. After these two years of struggling, working long shifts and earning. I wanted to make my mom a surprise. So I called her from the airport and full of joy and hope in my voice screamed that I`m coming back home. HOME!
And there it was, her sorrow full of nervousness, her voice asking me repeatedly am I positive that I want to come back. She was really surprised and couldn’t comprehend how I could possibly want to come back from the developed prosperous country to our grey and brutal reality.
And now five years later we have pretty much the same conversation. She’s asking me did I find any legal way to remain in Poland. And then restraining her emotions she asks me really quietly: so are you really going back home in June? And here it goes. This unbearable feeling of fault and commitment.
So whether I want it or not I have to be an exile. Or I would rather say a betrayer of my own country.
It’s not about being patriotic. It’s about being rejected from your own home. It’s about being ready for everything just to get a passport for the other more safe and promising country.
And I have to do that to make her happy. Because she’s happy when I am happy. But the problem is that we have an extremely different definition of happiness. So we can’t be happy at the same time.
Since her happiness excludes mine and mine excludes her.
