NirvanaFunClub

(disclaimer: text you are about to read is one of the most embarrasing things I have wrote. I am in my aunt Milicent phase I guess.)

I grew up in a hateful world. More precisely, I grew up in a hateful country. Hate was the first thing I needed to learn in order to survive. Who hates whom and why? If there even is a why. In most cases there is no why. In my experience hate does not explain. Hate does not provide answers = Hate does not listen to reason. It has its own agenda, which is, in various degrees, extermination, complete annihilation. Luckily, or not, people that live in my hateful country did not exterminate. Not completely. Annihilation would eliminate the hate as well. Would it?

Just to be clear, citizens that participate in the hateful game that society puts upon them are not necessarily bad people. That is one of the most frustrating things when you are on the other side of the aisle. Majority of the people are just trying to survive, going with the flow, the ones that would work from 9-5 in every society. You cannot even get mad at them. You cannot demand their participation. Who could blame them?

But that is not what I am trying to say. I am not fighting against societal inertia. I got used to my hateful world. I’ve learned the rules.

When I was a kid I knew I have to hide from the other people in my land. I am not sure if anyone ever explained anything to me, I just felt it. You usually do. I was supposed to exist under the radar. I have sensed there was something different about my parents. My mom asked me if I wanted to go to religious classes (Sunday school if you will). Since it was another class that I would get graded in I said “no”. That is also the reason I never learned German. Not the smartest decision, the German part, but a very appropriate one for a 6 year old. I regret nothing. There were 5 more kids in my school not going, but in the entirety of the country I truly believe we were the only 5, openly, non religious, minors.

After the experience of feeling excluded sitting outside of the classroom doing nothing while other kids were taught about religion (years later my teachers moved those classes from in the middle of the school day, to after the mandatory classes) I’ve noticed my mom got upset one day coming from school. My teachers asked her to write something in my school report card. She refused and said to me ‘If someone asks, you do not have a nationality.’ (Mind you, different from citizenship.) I was feeling a mix of pride, because I felt special, but at the same time I didn’t know why, so I didn’t know if it was a good special or a bad special. Since it was my mom and I loved my mom, I wholeheartedly believed it was a good special. My mom is good, isn’t she?

You know how you are a product of your parents? That is why I made excuses for assholes my whole life even when they were assholes.

I got some context later on, my dad explained ‘You know, people can see from your social security number you are not like them. They can read who your parents are.’ That was the first time in my life I felt something is wrong, my reality changed a bit, I felt scared. From that day forward I didn’t just feel I knew I had to hide. I didn’t even want to answer when someone asked what my father’s name was. His name was a tell, I knew it. He taught me all of the names and surnames from the area and what they mean, where they come from. Some of them were funny, like Shoemaker or Rumbler ‘because they were probably always hungry’, some were just factual, ‘Luckily our last name can be found all around the country, we could’ve come from anywhere’. And that turned out to be true. Even now when someone asks me for my family name, they either have never heard of it, or propose some area of the country that is far from where I am from.

To explain, my parents had scientific minds (were intellectual snobs). They didn’t believe in godS. My grandparents on both sides didn’t believe in godS, but if my father believed in godS, which he didn’t, he would’ve believed in the wrong oneS. That made him an enemy of the state, at one point. He lost his job, all of his friends and started hiding from those days onwards. My mom was also a problem by association.

My father was a proud man, so after the initial shock and the actual immediate danger period he found new friends. He stoped hiding and would talk a bit too loudly and proudly about all of the people that literally changed their names to hide their heritage, while he stood by his: ‘You cannot change your name, renounce it, you have to stand by it. It would be the same as renouncing your parents! Your history!’

My fear did not diminish until I was in my late 20ies. In high school I started to get angry about the whole thing and would say my dad’s name if anyone asked. Baby steps, I guess and up until now, my parents didn’t do anything wrong to anyone else other than each other:

My father suffered from the untreated FTSD which led him to feel inadequate all the time. Nothing was good enough, he wasn’t good enough, even though, funnily enough, we got enough money. It turns out he was an entrepreneur in his heart after all. But since he couldn’t deal with his anger he started to be angry at my mom. They got divorced because my mom got sick. She caught up with his PTSD.

On my 18 birthday I had to stop watching the news. My young brain was so fed up with the hate that I couldn’t deal with the frustration anymore. It was wrong. All of it was just wrong. The scariest characters in my life were and always will be the hateful public figures from TV. Very scary faces. Very angry rhetoric. My fellow citizens seemed to worshiped them. They rallied around them, around the national symbols of the country and around the singers that sang hateful songs about national purity, poetic killings while summoning unity and fraternity. Nothing too innovative, but enough to make you feel scared. Not welcome. Even now when I hear the national anthem I get chills. I need to remind myself I am safe, it is just a song, a bit embarrassing one, but just a song.

And that leads me to now. Present day. The sun is shinning, days are getting longer, we are warm enough, waiting for the summer when all of our problems will amount to 0 and my friends are worried. My country is worried. Society is worried. Media, all worried. News are full of it. I still live in the same country, not much has changed. But all of a sudden everyone around me is worried. I feel like I am surrounded with sleeping beauties stumbling around, drowsy, after 40 years of sleep.

‘Why is a vast majority of our nation chanting the songs of hate? Inviting poetic killings and calling for natinal purity? Is this the country we are living in? Is this what we are teaching our youth?’

Excuse me? You do not get to change the game! You do not get to change the rules after I’ve learned them. You do not get to move the ground beneath my feet, even if it is in a positive direction. How dare you make me feel stupid? AGAIN?!

Welcome friends. I am glad we are now free enough to raise our heads and, at least, act surprised.

I am getting new friends!