All for posterity.

People talk to me a lot. Whether they do it because I seem approachable and relatable (which I highly doubt, since I’m always wearing my ‘fuck off’ expression) or because they just feel like I’m trustworthy and therefore easy to chat with, fact is they talk to me a lot. I’m on a train to Central London and somewhere between Balham and the centre of the universe, someone will sit down and begin chatting about what a wonderful, starry night it is. Or when I’m in line at the supermarket, they’ll let me know my cans of coke are 2 for 1 and then immediately revert to how blue my eyes are. You get my drift.

I always talk back. Always. I may not smile as politely as they’d like me to, but I say something back, so as to not let these people with a horrible first (and usually, last) impression. Hell, if they say something really nice or interesting, I’ll even smile and pretend I care. Why pretend? Because extremely rarely it happens that a random person can actually strike a spark of interest in me. I’m the human personification of a sponge for knowledge. So chances are I already know those cans are on offer and I have looked at the shade of blue in my irises. But I smile and nod, because it makes people feel good and then they go out onto the street and in a world of sadness and war and sorrow, they feel good for about 30 seconds. But hey, that’s better than nothing.

However, what particularly strikes me as interesting is those rare occasions when I get to meet someone remotely fascinating and we start up a conversation while waiting in line to a pharmacy or trying to get tickets to the up coming tour of some band that shall remain unnamed. They ask where I’m from, because I, no matter how hard I try to blend in, don’t look English. Yes, I may speak the language quite perfectly, but I will always look foreign, despite living here for two years now. I usually say ‘Eastern Europe’ because it’s anonymous and it’s how I would like to stay, for the time being. And… Three. Two. One.

Their eyes begin to shine. Actually, wait. There’s like a hint of glitter in their look and they give me a once over, so as to let me know they ‘understood’. At first, I was puzzled and didn’t bother to ask what exactly it was that they suddenly knew so well. But as it kept on happening, I eventually had to give in and ask. And I hate asking. My country of origin seems to be giving away details about myself that I never bring in a random, casual conversation. It tells strangers that it’s okay for me to get married and beaten up, because that’s the rumour. It says that I’m some kind of sex freak, because they were in the capital once and two hookers blew their mind away. It screams that we’re stupid, simply because the country’s systems are at a lower value and people running it are old fashioned and it’s still customary for men to buy off young girls to marry into their wealthy families. Because the latter families don’t have what it takes to send their daughters to school and give them a chance to proper education and knowledge.

It doesn’t tell anyone that we learn in school what others never learn, despite following an education path for years in a row. It never once told them that I come from the country that invented penicillin or the first aeroplane. It doesn’t speak about great landscapes and amazing legends, fantastic architecture styles or really good food. But it does say I should get down on my knees in an alleyway or become a doormat for my future partner.

And it’s sad. I used to be ashamed by my roots and pretend I was born in a no name country, because of all those things. But I realised after being away for so long that it’s not in a country to make one’s name, it’s in our characters and what we choose to believe and do. It’s our choices that determine these things you get to know about one person, not where they were born. I’m now proud to come where I come from. I’ve learnt to appreciate the good things and take the bad along with them, because there’s no right without wrong, no beauty without ugliness and no happiness without sadness.