unFRIENDLY RIVALRY: countryhumans

Prelude- Eastern bloc - 1989

This is one of my everyday memories of that time. Just another day in this grey and depressingly gloomy reality. I occupied myself with mundane tasks to keep my sanity. Every day, I would wake up accordingly to the schedule that was set out for me by my "loving uncle", USSR - a towering man, standing at an impressive height of 8 feet (around 250 cm). A man of an impressive stature, and equally dangerous behaviour. No one should've ever trusted him, and those who did were equally as mad as he was. No amount of lies he force fed me throughout all those years would ever change my mind. I resented him.

6:30 December 5th, Monday morning:

Yet another one of these days that we're planned out from A to Z. Every action I took lacked even the slightest bit of spontaneity to it. Every move felt like a carbon copy of the one I made a day prior in the same time.

Wake up.

Get up.

Get dressed.

Go to the living hell I called work.

Come back home only to realise that there's nothing in the fridge.

Go to the nearest store and hope that this time you'll be able to buy something to eat, and so I set out on what initially was just a short journey but ended up being a long expedition in search of food. My neighbourhood was now referred to as the 'Eastern Bloc', where the USSR's "puppets" had to live, separated from the outside world by the iron curtain. USSR would always try his very best to prevent us from ever interacting with those "filthy capitalist", as "they could brainwash us into taking on their failing capitalist ideology." At least that's what he used to say. Of course not many would be very pleased with this situation at all, but there were some countries that were much more approving of his work than I was.

Every day I would be forced to pass those ash grey buildings, and the infamous propaganda posters USSR would plaster all over the bloc as a means of manipulating our subconscious minds. Did he really think that I would be able to forget about the war crimes he committed against me? Did he really think that he would be able to silence me for long? Did he really think that I wouldn't resist after the Katyn massacre? Just thinking about all the disgusting crimes he has committed against me, makes me grow even more determined to finally break free from this soviet birdcage.

The posters about USSR's "liberation" from fascism only grew in numbers the closer I got the the eastern bloc's centre. It made my blood boil, seeing how this falsified history made its way onto almost every building in sight.

Liberation.

This... this was anything but liberation.

After hours of standing in seemingly endless lines, where the countries of the Easter bloc would line up with the same hopes of finally getting a decent meal. After all the shelves were almost always empty, no matter how much money I payed to USSR to order the food supplies we wanted, only a small percentage of what we payed in working hours for actually made it to the stores. Instead he would use this as an opportunity to take those goods for himself and his son.

Hypocrisy of this man was beyond anything I saw in my life, on one side he keeps on screeching about how he wants everyone to be basking in the glorious beauty of communism, where everyone has equal opportunities ( which is not that impressive considering the fact that there were no opportunities available, everyone felt highly unmotivated and hated their jobs) but even after all that preaching he would still ostentatiously take anything he wanted from us as long as he had a use for it or felt that he or his son would benefit from it.

Due to my constant business that was caused by my drive to survive this unfortunate position I found myself in, I would end up coming back home at late hours, often with nothing but a bottle of vodka, as there would be no other items available in stores. This depressing reality was nothing new to me, after all my entire modern history is nothing but a long story of unfortunate events that my lovely neighbours had the courtesy to put me through.

In spite of the occasional tortures that USSR conducted on me, when he noticed my spiteful attitude towards his ideology and unwillingness to covert to Stalinism, these things would still fade in comparison to what he and my other neighbours decided to do to me during the WWII.

It was probably the painful memories and the fact that they would sell nothing but vodka that eventually drove me into developing minor alcoholic tendencies as a way of dealing with stress.

Every Saturday, I would fetch that bottle and tilt it back and forward restlessly, refilling my cup again and again in a loop. However I would always stop myself when I felt that I'd had enough, and I felt all of my emotions slowly escaping from my troubled mind and feel them slowly roll down my face as I looked up at the ceiling, lying on my bed. I didn't cry very often. But alcohol made it somewhat easier for my mind to stop blocking those feelings out and keeping them tightly pressed against each other, as they usually would.

Don't get me wrong. You would never be able to tell if I'm actually stressed or saddened at this point. I suppress all of my emotions. My face has a permanent grimace of genuine disinterest mixed with neutrality. At a certain point in life I simply forgot how to smile. I felt like I had nothing to ever smile about anymore, and so I stopped.

Honest smiles are something that I keep for those special moments in my life.

Giving an honest smile is like giving a golden medal to an athlete that has finally managed to win in first place after much determination and countless attempts, and through doing so you are honouring that moment.

I was still waiting for a moment when I would have something to smile about.