In the name of success

Prologue

 The plane is delayed. As if home was grasping after me and trying to keep me in its embrace. Is it trying to tell me that I should stay? Or maybe it is offering me a little more time for my heart to say goodbye. It is never easy to leave home and go out on an adventure you’ve never been before, especially not if you don’t know of your return. And ESPECIALLY not if those closest to you hate you for doing so.

My own parents haven’t come to the airport to wave me goodbye, they haven’t even looked at me when I was leaving the house. Not one word was spoken between us. I know they hate me for making the decision to go after everything they gave me - their heart, their money, their life.

Every child wants to please its parents and is thrown into despair if it is not successful. I tried, I did everything to make them feel that little bliss to a point where I was miserable with everything that was going on in my life. But I don’t blame them, they must have endured great suffering by giving up many things to offer me decent education, although they never spoke of it. And in a way I am throwing all their sacrifices away now by leaving before finishing my political studies. “You were never meant to be a little person like us, you were always meant to do great things, to change Poland”, they kept telling me all the time as if I was their hope, their solution to all the problems in society. I wanted to be their hope, but I always knew I wasn’t made from the right material to be a politician. I am just too damn moral for that, I don’t want to take decisions for a greater good of Poland while there is always some collateral damage on the side. Ah, fuck collateral damage expression, it is the people we are talking about here. I don’t want to play with other people’s lives.

But in one thing my parents were right. I did want to become someone, woman with power in its hands, with power not only over my life but also over lives of others. But sadly my family saw the journey away only as a naïve expression of love for a man I knew only over the internet. They never understood that it is not just for a man, it is for the opportunity, for the opportunity to succeed in the big world - to perform on the world stage alongside the big actors. My own home, Poland, is too little actor in the world to even be important in this play.

When I was having a farewell party with my polish friends – well not so much of a party, more a war meeting as many of them as soon as they knew I am leaving turned immediately away from me, I guess the loss of someone hurts less then - my best friend advised me then not to burn all the bridges behind me. In a way she was right, but it was her fear for me talking more than anything else. I know everything will go well with him AND me – and if the bridges burn behind me, I’ll be sad, but I won’t hurt myself over and over again trying to put the fire out.

I did that before, far too many times with my now ex-boyfriend Wit. My and his parents were best friends from teenage years. So we grew up together and it became expected from us to stay together also later in our lives. I did love him as a companion and he did care for me in his own way, but as many polish boys do he loved his vodka far more than me.

We argued, we argued a lot. I yelled at him every time he came drunk to me and he always stayed even – with his fists! No begging on knees to stop helped, there were always exactly five blows – I always counted them to keep my mind from the pain – two to my head, two to my stomach and ended with the shoulder hit. It was like our little dance, knowing all the moves the other will make. When he sobered up, he was always remorseful and promised he won’t do it again, although we both knew that was not true. Our dance of pain had to continue.

My parents knew what was happening, but always turned a blind eye as they didn’t want to lose their good old friends. I memorized my mother’s words every time I came to her in bruises, “You yelled at him again, didn’t you?! As a woman you must be there for a man when he wants you and you must know when to pull out when he doesn’t need you. When will you finally learn this!? Now go back and fix this, apologize as a good girl I thought you to be!” And I obeyed her and did as she said and tried, tried so hard to be a good girlfriend and to fix the burning bridge without any water but my bare hands for two years – it would take even longer, maybe it would never end, if I wouldn’t came across a new hope on the internet.