I will survive

“Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void.

From the movie “You’ve Got Mail”

Long ruffled gypsy or flamenco skirts are my passion. I made a few skirts in my life with ruffles from multicolored cotton, and my favorite one was black with small yellowish flowers and green leaves. When I wore that skirt in Leningrad on my first trip by myself, I was showered with whistles. Curiously, I got so much attention in my maxi skirt in the season of minis. At home, my sister and I loved to throw shawls around our waists and danced and sang, shaking tambourines above our blond heads. 

Leaving Russia was equal to a concussion: sudden and long-lasting. One day, I learned during a lecture that pain travels in our system with the speed of twenty miles-per-minute, while pleasure travels at two hundred. “How come I have so much pain in my body?” I thought thirteen years later.

If pain travels slower than pleasure, then why does pleasure not beat pain? Do I not have pleasure? The presenter explained that if we let happiness and joy enter our lives and fill all our nerve channels with it, we will be less vulnerable to pain. Where could I find enough joy to replace the pain that built a nest in my jaw? My jaw became a hub for stress. My daughter and I tried to find a word for “fun” in Russian, and we finally gave up. There is no “fun” in Russian.

“Lydia, you should make your skin thicker! You’re too sensitive!” My friends’ loving and caring comment always put me in a state of trance. But then it hit me, why should I be somebody else?! Yes, my skin is thin, but what can I do about it? Why is it me, who should constantly adopt, accept, agree, approve, forgive, swallow and be humble? How about those who hurt, insult, betray, lie and steal? If I grow my skin thick, then it wouldn’t be me!

 “Lydia, you should make your skin thicker!” At first, I smiled. Then, I learned that it was less painful if I switched to another subject. It was easier than to say that my skin was not their business. Comments like this make me feel like an outcast even more, like I was deficient of something that everybody around was born with. My car became my refuge; out of the blue, the grief and hurt and loneliness pressed hard through layers of stoicism, and I almost suffocated in the car, weeping.

The music was on from the moment I turned on the ignition, but I heard no music. Gradually, the sensual and passionate beat of Gypsy Kings saturated the car, and its ecstasy finally reached my fogged ears. I still tried to stop my tears but I didn’t gasp for air anymore. The memories of Russian Gypsies began warming up my blood. Gypsy music and its infatuation are encoded into our DNA. It does not mean we invited Gypsies from the margins into our happy Soviet existence. Gypsies were for entertainment purposes only. To my amazement, I realized how similar my life had become. The life of an entertainer. Being always around people, I was fatally alone: with the people, but not really.

“Baila-baila-baila-baila…” I drove fast, singing as a fanatic and laughing like a child at once. I should not cry. I am an outcast and I do not have the luxury to cry over everything.

At home, I pulled my old shawl out of a suitcase that my parents brought from Russia.  I kicked off my shoes and took off my socks. Then, I put on a long skirt, grabbed the edge of it and began my untamed barefoot dance to my own singing, accompanied by a tambourine, “Dorogoi dal’neiu, da nochkoi lunnoiu….” – the song that even Americans know: “Those were the days, my friend! We thought they’d never end, we sing and dance forever and again! We live the life we choose, we fight and never lose, for we are young and sure to have our way!”

I didn’t become thick-skinned, but I found a remedy for crying in the car alone. Gypsy songs sharpened my stubbornness. I knew then, I would survive.