I didn't know where to put this, so I apologize if it's in the wrong spot. This will be a long post, so please bear with me -- or simply don't read on ) As some of you know, I am preparing to leave Ukraine soon to move back to the States after living overseas for the past 10 years.
Most of that time was spent in Russia, and I find myself deeply sad about the prospect of leaving Russia behind, likely forever. I don't agree with the Kremlin's policies, and I don't support a lot of what is going on in Russia today, but I do feel like I am leaving a huge chunk of myself behind. Like it's a betrayal of some kind for me to leave and move back to the States. I guess I'm just trying to pin down why exactly I feel such profound sadness about this?
I moved to Russia right after graduating college. Had been accepted into an elite writing program in Belfast (they accepted only 10 out of several thousand applicants) and threw it away to randomly move to Russia. Why? Because I was volunteering in an orphanage and I felt a deeper bond with the kids in the orphanage than I did with any of my peers. So, i decided to stay and learn the language (at that time I didn't know a word of Russian). I sold my car back home to finance my stay, continued to volunteer at the orphanage and started studying Russian.
Went through some really hard times, completely alone. Starved, literally, for three weeks when my money ran out and I was too determined to stay and learn Russian to take the easy way out and leave. I tried to hibernate in a dark closet to conserve energy, but eventually my vision started to go and my muscles stopped working, so I started eating random bits of trash I had in the apartment.
Soon moved to Moscow to start a new job. Me, young and alone in a ruthless foreign city. Was homeless for a few days at a train station. It was terrifying. Then I lived in a hostel run and inhabited by criminals for several years. Met some human traffickers and conmen. Somehow survived living alongside them, in the same dorm.
Lived in the country illegally for a few years, which was really terrifying. Got out of it by brazenly befriending the right people in the Foreign Ministry and one of the security services. Was sent to the embassy in Estonia so they could sort it all out. Was courted by some of these "friends" for years afterwards.
Things finally got more stable when I got a job at a well-known publication. I started to climb the career ladder very quickly, and got to a place where I was truly happy. It coincided with Putin's return to the presidency, strangely. And that's when things started to get weird in the country.
But I was allowed to write about what I wanted, and did some amazing field work covering the HIV/AIDs crisis, human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Even helped free some slaves in Dagestan before being pulled off a train by Russian security services and accused of being a spy.
Things in Ukraine started to heat up and people grew more suspicious and hostile in Russia, in many different ways. The country started to isolate itself more and more and trample human rights. But it didn't scare me off. Just made me more interested.
Boris Nemtsov was assassinated. I rushed to the scene of the murder on the bridge, saw the body still there while they were trying to hose away the blood. That's when things really got scary. All of the opposition activists I knew started to genuinely fear for their lives; some fled the country, some stayed.
I will never forget the protest march to honor Nemtsov. It was held a few days after his murder, if I remember correctly. He had planned to lead a protest march that day but it became a funeral procession for him instead. Anyway, the entire protest/march was eerily quiet. Nobody uttered a sound, nobody. All you could hear was the sound of helicopters overhead as the security services watched. There were flanks of riot police around every corner staring us down.
I don't know why that event stands out in my memory so much -- probably because my mental state darkened along with events inside Russia. The dark cloud that seemed to permanently hover over Moscow resonated with me; I had the same dark cloud in my head. I'd had an abortion about a year earlier and it caught up with me, I started to develop a nasty drinking problem.
I came very close to hanging myself one night and then decided I needed to change something. So I accepted a job covering the war in Ukraine. A lot of my friends stopped talking to me once I started working for "the other side." People in Russia started to accuse me of being a CIA pawn, while people in Ukraine started to accuse me of being a Kremlin agent. I got threats from both sides.
And although I have been through a lot in Ukraine -- got shot at by snipers, got threatened and forcefully ejected from the rebels' stronghold after cheekily using my two separate identities to have more versatility in the war zone, and oh, gave birth, for Christ's sake -- it is still Russia that seems to hold a part of me. And it's Russia that I feel sad about leaving behind.
I don't know why. I guess, perhaps, it's because it was there that I truly stood on my own, completely alone, and faced a lot of unthinkable situations. Situations that I never dreamed I would find myself in when I was younger. When you hear people talk about self-actualization, i guess this is that, in some way; I always wondered just how much I was capable of, and it was in Russia that I found out the answer to that.
There were a lot of things I left out, for various reasons. But still, it seems like I went through more in those 10 years in Russia than I did in my entire life. And it saddens me to think I will be back in my own culture, a culture that I don't really feel I belong to anymore.
Sorry for this very self-involved post. It was just something I wanted to get out.
Most of that time was spent in Russia, and I find myself deeply sad about the prospect of leaving Russia behind, likely forever. I don't agree with the Kremlin's policies, and I don't support a lot of what is going on in Russia today, but I do feel like I am leaving a huge chunk of myself behind. Like it's a betrayal of some kind for me to leave and move back to the States. I guess I'm just trying to pin down why exactly I feel such profound sadness about this?
I moved to Russia right after graduating college. Had been accepted into an elite writing program in Belfast (they accepted only 10 out of several thousand applicants) and threw it away to randomly move to Russia. Why? Because I was volunteering in an orphanage and I felt a deeper bond with the kids in the orphanage than I did with any of my peers. So, i decided to stay and learn the language (at that time I didn't know a word of Russian). I sold my car back home to finance my stay, continued to volunteer at the orphanage and started studying Russian.
Went through some really hard times, completely alone. Starved, literally, for three weeks when my money ran out and I was too determined to stay and learn Russian to take the easy way out and leave. I tried to hibernate in a dark closet to conserve energy, but eventually my vision started to go and my muscles stopped working, so I started eating random bits of trash I had in the apartment.
Soon moved to Moscow to start a new job. Me, young and alone in a ruthless foreign city. Was homeless for a few days at a train station. It was terrifying. Then I lived in a hostel run and inhabited by criminals for several years. Met some human traffickers and conmen. Somehow survived living alongside them, in the same dorm.
Lived in the country illegally for a few years, which was really terrifying. Got out of it by brazenly befriending the right people in the Foreign Ministry and one of the security services. Was sent to the embassy in Estonia so they could sort it all out. Was courted by some of these "friends" for years afterwards.
Things finally got more stable when I got a job at a well-known publication. I started to climb the career ladder very quickly, and got to a place where I was truly happy. It coincided with Putin's return to the presidency, strangely. And that's when things started to get weird in the country.
But I was allowed to write about what I wanted, and did some amazing field work covering the HIV/AIDs crisis, human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Even helped free some slaves in Dagestan before being pulled off a train by Russian security services and accused of being a spy.
Things in Ukraine started to heat up and people grew more suspicious and hostile in Russia, in many different ways. The country started to isolate itself more and more and trample human rights. But it didn't scare me off. Just made me more interested.
Boris Nemtsov was assassinated. I rushed to the scene of the murder on the bridge, saw the body still there while they were trying to hose away the blood. That's when things really got scary. All of the opposition activists I knew started to genuinely fear for their lives; some fled the country, some stayed.
I will never forget the protest march to honor Nemtsov. It was held a few days after his murder, if I remember correctly. He had planned to lead a protest march that day but it became a funeral procession for him instead. Anyway, the entire protest/march was eerily quiet. Nobody uttered a sound, nobody. All you could hear was the sound of helicopters overhead as the security services watched. There were flanks of riot police around every corner staring us down.
I don't know why that event stands out in my memory so much -- probably because my mental state darkened along with events inside Russia. The dark cloud that seemed to permanently hover over Moscow resonated with me; I had the same dark cloud in my head. I'd had an abortion about a year earlier and it caught up with me, I started to develop a nasty drinking problem.
I came very close to hanging myself one night and then decided I needed to change something. So I accepted a job covering the war in Ukraine. A lot of my friends stopped talking to me once I started working for "the other side." People in Russia started to accuse me of being a CIA pawn, while people in Ukraine started to accuse me of being a Kremlin agent. I got threats from both sides.
And although I have been through a lot in Ukraine -- got shot at by snipers, got threatened and forcefully ejected from the rebels' stronghold after cheekily using my two separate identities to have more versatility in the war zone, and oh, gave birth, for Christ's sake -- it is still Russia that seems to hold a part of me. And it's Russia that I feel sad about leaving behind.
I don't know why. I guess, perhaps, it's because it was there that I truly stood on my own, completely alone, and faced a lot of unthinkable situations. Situations that I never dreamed I would find myself in when I was younger. When you hear people talk about self-actualization, i guess this is that, in some way; I always wondered just how much I was capable of, and it was in Russia that I found out the answer to that.
There were a lot of things I left out, for various reasons. But still, it seems like I went through more in those 10 years in Russia than I did in my entire life. And it saddens me to think I will be back in my own culture, a culture that I don't really feel I belong to anymore.
Sorry for this very self-involved post. It was just something I wanted to get out.
