Girl in the Neon Pink Coat

My neon pink coat stood out amid the sea of black and brown coats, making it impossible for anyone to do anything except stop and stare, and the typically reserved-in-public Muscovites couldn’t help themselves.

I was 11 years old when I wore that neon pink coat and fell in love with Russia and her people. I knew my life would never be the same. Moscow became “home” for me as a young teenager. My time in Moscow remains among the happiest moments in my life.

This past week I looked those moments straight in the face and asked “why?” “Why was my time in Russia so special to me?”

I knew the main reasons, the reasons I told anyone who would listen as I gushed about living in Russia. I loved the country, the culture, the language, the food, the Russian people, and my lifelong friends. My perspective as a young teenager from a town of 20,000 in Arkansas expanded exponentially upon moving to Russia’s capitol, boasting a population of 16 million, a city teeming with beautiful, precious people struggling to find their footing, struggling for life itself in the tumultuous and early post-Soviet years. Precious people fighting to have what I had always taken for granted, much less than I had actually. Fighting to have bread to eat. Fighting deep depression and hopelessness as their life savings vanished overnight with the devaluation of the Ruble.

Living in Russia showed me a world bigger than myself.

I knew all of these reasons why I loved Russia. Why I had been changed in Russia. Yet on this Sunday morning, I sought another answer still tucked neatly away in the closet of my heart. I could feel it, but it was just out of reach, nagging me, beckoning me, challenging me to let it out.
 
Growing up in a cult complicates many things, and I lived in Russia with the cult.

“Why do I remember being so happy there? What am I not putting together here?” I asked myself again.

Suddenly they came.

Answers forcefully pushing up, lifting the lid and spilling out of the proverbial Pandora’s box, and pushing me down to the kitchen floor, engulfed in sobs.

Gut wrenching sobs.

Once the flashbacks started, I knew there was little I could do to stop them.

I let my body speak, and I listen. Truth, as painful as it may be, sets me free. The tears, the grief, the pain of the past. Grief and pain so intense the sobs propel my body to vomit, as if to eradicate those fragments of poison from my body.

Sitting on my kitchen floor, curled in a ball, I embrace the deep, tangible, painful, full-encompassing grief as if it were an old friend and let the tears flow.

I cry for what was lost. I cry for the girl in the neon pink coat, and all that she suffered in the city she loved so much.

In the midst of pain, something surprises me. For the first time, I clearly see how the little girl in the neon pink coat also tasted the first flavors of freedom in Moscow. Moments when she felt loved, and felt safe. She saw glimmers of hope. My life in Moscow offered me a taste of hope, a taste of freedom. Of being loved. Of being safe.

From another room, and another lifetime, a little voice calls out, “Mama?!” in between my sobs.

Gathering my strength, I slowly stand with purpose, resolve, as well as new understanding, and I move toward the dear little voice calling out. Calling for Mama. Calling me.

I smile, thinking of the little girl in the neon pink coat who bravely pushed forward all those years ago to give me the chance to be free.






#Россия #Москва #ThirdCultureKid #OutoftheShadows
#cultsurvivor #traumasurvivor #sexualabusesurvivor
#LiveInternationally #expatlife
#Goodlife #Healing #freedom

© 2020 Mary Elie