Never Meet Your Hero. Ch.5

Olenegorsk met me unfriendly.

The apartment I had booked in advance turned out to be a real rat hole. The leaky ceiling, brown stains all over the shabby wallpaper, worn-out furniture and dirty old plumbing were not all the issues I faced – for I had used to live in worse conditions. The suckiest thing was that in the slum the place was locaded there was no Internet connection at all.

Of course, I could have got an Internet connection at my own expense, but it would have been a chore. It was a lot easier to just find a better accomodation, which I began to try almost immediately as I grabbed my laptop and headed for the nearest cafee with a Wi-fi.

The town center covered all over with grey asphalt and surrounded with just as asphalt-grey buildings was deserted. Everything looked grey here. Grey five-storey houses. Grey half-empty roads. Grey, rainy sky above. Even the scanty grass on the loans and the stunted trees looked grey…

Perhaps, it all looked to me like that after the bright, colorful, emerald green and sunshine landscapes of Australia?

But I was unhappy over there. I wasn’t allowed to live my life. I didn’t belong to myself. I was nobody with no name. A despicable creature totally disrespected and loathed by my own husband.

When I was marrying him I believed I was making him happy, that he was going to shower me with gifts – for who was he? A plain, shy, sad sack not wanted by anyone. An impotent virgin, in addition. Who on Earth would have had him?

Oh, what a stupid, ridiculous, harmful delision! There’s nothing more pathetic and disgusting that a person imagining themselves a God or a Goddess and believing that they are coming down to their partner, less valuable in their eyes – hoping that ‘less valuable’ is going to appreciate it and for the rest of his or her life prostrate to them, wash their feet and drink that water.

Spoiler: That’s not happening.

At least because the ‘less valuable one’ knows who he is. And he is definitely not happy with this role. So he will take revenge on you for that sooner or later, and, having barely fledged, he’ll fly away, kissing you a painful goodbye. Like a snake you have warmed on your chest, like a scorpio you have carried to the land, he will sting you first.

He will never forgive you coming down to him.

My humble, unwanted by anyone else sad failure of a husband turned into a cruel, arrogant narcissist as soon as he realised that I who had come down to him, was now totally dependent on him.

I can remember what a tremendous difference there was – when in the beginning of our relationship he hated himself and, looking at the mirror, used to make a sour face: “Ew, how ugly I am!”

And later in Australia, when I, so-to-say, licked him into shape, boosting his ego with sweet compliments – he put on a crown and, spinning in front of the mirror, punched himself in the chest and said with a smug air: “Man, man!”

Along with that, he began degrading and desparaging me horrendously, nagging at me and pecking out all conceivable and unconceivable flaws of my appearance. Making hurtful, humiliating jokes about my ‘saggy boobs’, ‘wobbly bum’, ‘beady eyes’, ‘twiggy arms’ and so on and on…

And just like that, gradually, he and his family dragged in the dirt my whole self-esteem and made me believe and I really was a piece of shit not deserving better treatment.

I was right getting the fuck out of there. I should have done it a long time ago.

It’s better to live in some grey dullsville but rule your life at your own discretion, be yourself and not be ashamed of it, than to dwell in any paradise country as a condemned, dependent piece of shit with no right to even say a word and defend its boundaries.

That’s what I think.