things I didn’t know before (maybe)

I was born in the USSR. I had a great childhood. I felt loved. I felt treasured. I felt like my world was full of sunlight, magical moments delivered by my parents, grandparents and all the people in the community. I still remember a cake I had when I was 6 years old which had bunnies (I mean bunnies!!) on it and green grass. I was so happy. So seen. I spent days doing crafts, making clothes. I spend days reading books. I read fairytales from the whole wide world, I read Shakespear, I read a lot to the point where I actually started volunteering at a local library because I loved organizing books so much. I also don’t only say this was my childhood without pain. There was fair share of that too. There was a lot of challenges, and situations, where I cried, I was bullied by my primary school teacher “to build character”. I am not trying to positive wash anyting. Everything is life. And life is everything.

And as later on, some good 30 years later, explaining my childhood story at the intake at the therapists’ office in Amsterdam, I freaked out after the therapist was swinging a diagnosis of a personality disorder to my face because apparently I had a very unnusual childhood for the Dutch standards. And I suppose I did. I spent long hours training myself not to breathe in case nuclear plant explodes, I spent time learning how to save and protect people from checmical or biological weapons before the age of 11 or 12. I went and volunteered with the Red Cross for the first aid and I did volunteer for the basic army training. I spent time learning to understand different people and not to talk about religion. I was taught also to draw curtains every time my family would sit down for a meal that might look like its a worship moment, even if it wasn’t.

And now. Being in the situation when I don’t have to do anything. I have an excuse of an everyday life. Of being busy. Of being anything else but present. When my main concern would be a flood in my appartment and the fact that I needed to change the whole floor, I actually spent full days looking for ways to support people who run from war. People that I actually share so much with - we know same cartoons and same jokes and same sayings but I have not necessarily known their culture. It has been melted together by a machine of 50 years and that has been also used as a weapon against them. Which makes me even more angry, even more fiery to do something about it. Because in the end of the day, its not just about people who know who or what Cheburashka is, or who can understand a certain language, its all about the humanity, about the connection and the agency. About feel that dignity that we need to (re)connect with the deepest things in our soul and really say yes, we are not doing this because this is something I find so meaningful. We are doing this because its not negotiable. It’s here. It’s now. We can be connected or separated by walls, cartoons, ways to communicate, ways to ignore each other, ways to doubt each other…. but we will always be connected by being human beings and as I love to call it - human becomings.