In the fall of 2014, I unexpectedly ran into Dasha, Nadia’s school friend, near Bratislava Park. She was riding a bicycle, while I was on a scooter. We were traveling in opposite directions and eventually passed one another. When she saw me, she seemed a little flustered. I stopped and said hello. She returned my greeting. Seeing her filled me with genuine joy, as if the past had returned for a moment, bringing with it a familiar feeling of warmth.
However, after we exchanged greetings, I didn’t know how to continue the conversation and felt somewhat awkward. Besides, I wasn’t sure whether Dasha herself would feel comfortable talking to me. So I only asked whether she was out riding, even though the answer was obvious from the situation itself. She said yes, after which I wished her well and rode away.
One of the following evenings, perhaps a day after our meeting, I was drinking beer at home. The memory of Dasha once again brought me back to the way I had been slandered and effectively pushed out of their group. Under the influence of these memories and alcohol, I wanted to write her something barbed, expressing some of my grievances while provoking a reaction from her. Dasha had blocked my main account, so I used another page and sent her a message via a gift on VKontakte.
It contained the phrase “you to run someone over on a scooter.” It was meant to provoke her, but in terms of its meaning, it referred to a possible action on Dasha’s part.
Soon afterward, Maxim, Dasha’s boyfriend, wrote to me on VKontakte. He took the message as a threat and, in turn, threatened me with criminal liability under Article 119 of the Russian Criminal Code—for threatening to kill someone or inflict grievous bodily harm. I calmly explained that I had not threatened Dasha and that the grammatical structure of the phrase itself pointed to a possible action on her part, not mine.
Maxim replied that I shouldn’t make excuses. I said that I wasn’t trying to do that and suggested that he read carefully once more what had actually been written.
I also reminded Maxim of Article 128.1 of the Russian Criminal Code, which establishes liability for spreading knowingly false information that damages a person’s honor and dignity or undermines their reputation. After all, people in their group had previously viewed me as a drug addict, discussed it among themselves, and told others about it.
Essentially, I put Maxim in a position where any further direct answer would create a problem for him. If he had said that their view of me was correct and that I really had been a drug addict, I could have initiated proceedings based on his own words. If he denied that they had considered me a drug addict, he would then have had to deny the reason why I had been excluded from their group and Nadia had broken off relations with me.
So it was hardly surprising that, in that situation, Maxim simply replied:
— It can’t be proven.
I took his words as an indirect admission that they had been wrong. For me, this was a small restoration of justice in a situation where I had previously been almost completely deprived of the opportunity to respond.
Then Maxim said that this should be a lesson for me in the future: you must always tell the truth. He meant that if I had told the truth, no one would have considered me a drug addict. Once again, Maxim made me the source of the problem that had arisen.
However, the issue was not that I had lied about something—I had behaved honestly. It was simply that, during that period, Nadia and her group interpreted my words, actions, and the situations I found myself in according to their own ideas. They constructed a whole picture from individual signs in accordance with their own worldview, and then accepted the resulting picture as an established fact. It was precisely this false understanding of what was happening that led to the problems that followed.
Moreover, only a few minutes earlier, exactly the same thing had happened in that very exchange: a phrase whose grammatical construction was unambiguous had been interpreted differently, and I had been accused of threatening Dasha even though the phrase contained no such threat.
The conversation continued, and Maxim’s question was especially unpleasant: “Why doesn’t this happen to other people, but it happens to you?” He was referring to the painful events that had happened to me in the fall of 2011 and the first half of 2012.
However, the comparison itself was structured as if everyone lived under the same conditions, and the difference in what happened to them could be explained solely by their personal qualities. The generalized “other people” in Maxim’s question served as the norm, against which what had happened to me became evidence that the source of the problem once again lay within me.
A person who grows up in an intact family, surrounded by reliable friends and people who are loyal to them, learns from childhood whom they can trust, how to defend their boundaries, and how to respond to what happens around them. They do not have to discover through painful trial and error what others are taught and shown by the people close to them.
I had no such support. I was left alone, and every time I tried to trust someone, I risked being deceived or betrayed all over again. There was no one beside me who could recognize manipulation in time, challenge a false idea that had been instilled in me, or help me make sense of what was happening.
Yes, I made mistakes. One of them was trusting people who did not deserve my trust. However, Maxim saw only the consequences: my reactions, my wrong decisions, and the conflicts that arose around me. The conditions in which all of this happened lay outside his assessment, so he perceived the consequences as traits of my personality.
At some point, Maxim suggested that we meet. I acted cocky and pretended that this was exactly what I had been trying to get him to suggest all along. Maxim unexpectedly changed his mind and ended the conversation.
After that conversation, I felt a strong desire to see Nadia again. It seemed to me that perhaps people had already begun to understand that there had been a misunderstanding and that I was not the terrible person they had initially made me out to be.
However, taking that step was difficult. I hesitated for a long time, and because of that I wrote to Ivan F. again. From our exchange, it was no longer possible to tell whether he and Nadia were still dating at that point or had already broken up. But I clearly remember how he supported me and practically pushed me into action:
— Come on, just go and do it already. What are you hesitating for?
His words proved decisive. On November 14, I got up early one morning and went to Nadia with a large bouquet of flowers. I waited for her on the path between the buildings that she usually took from her home to the metro station.
When Nadia finally appeared in the distance, my heart started beating like crazy. The mere fact that I was seeing her again was happiness. I stood slightly to the side, near some bushes. When she came closer and we were almost level with each other, I stepped out to meet her and tried to give her the flowers, but at first she didn’t take them.
So I began listing everything useful I had managed to accomplish:
— I’ve already fixed a lot in my life: I got rid of the people who had a bad influence on me, found a new, well-paid job in IT, achieved stability, and started swimming. Let me fix the remaining mistakes.
As I listed my achievements, I folded down one finger after each item. And after saying the final words, I even jokingly sang them to the tune of the song “Our Youth Team”:
— The mistakes of our youth…
After that, Nadia took the flowers and said:
— All right, give me the flowers. Fix your mistakes.
Then she continued on to the metro station to go to college, while I remained standing there, watching her walk away and feeling over the moon.
This meeting strengthened my feeling that I was on the right path. On December 1, I went alone on a long-planned vacation to Thailand, to Pattaya, where I spent about a week. I stayed at a hotel, swam in the Gulf of Siam, went on excursions, rode an elephant and an ATV, walked along the city’s busy streets, and tried exotic fruits.
The trip felt like the end of a long and emotionally intense period. By then, I had managed to resolve most of the problems that had accumulated, and for the first time in a long while I felt that I could stop, catch my breath, and leave what I had been through behind me. The vacation helped me recover my strength, find inner peace, and look at what had happened in my life from a new perspective.
Nadia’s words—“All right, give me the flowers. Fix your mistakes”—continued to echo in my head. I took them as an opportunity to take the next step. That was why, on January 4, 2015, I went to her home with New Year’s gifts.
For Nadia, I bought a large white electronic plush toy in the shape of a cat that reacted to movement by doing something in response. I knew how much she loved cats. For her father, I chose an expensive bottle of cognac, hoping that this gesture would help me take the first step toward reconciliation.
However, after arriving in their neighborhood with the gifts, I couldn’t bring myself to go to their home for a long time. I was overwhelmed by intense anxiety: I was afraid of the moment of the meeting itself and simply couldn’t make myself approach the door. In the end, I couldn’t summon enough courage and decided to abandon the idea.
It was evening, and the New Year holidays were still going on. I thought that instead I would simply have a drink. I went into the nearest store and bought a couple of alcoholic energy drinks. They had always affected me especially strongly: my anxiety receded, and a peculiar confidence took its place. After drinking them, I didn’t merely become more courageous. The feeling that I absolutely had to go to Nadia and her father to give them the gifts flared up inside me with renewed force and literally began to burn. Only a short while earlier, I had given up on the idea, but now the need to do it seemed almost irresistible. And I went.
When I reached their building, I stood in the entrance for a short while: the front door was locked with an intercom. Soon, someone came in or went out, and I got inside. I then went up to the right floor and rang the doorbell of their apartment.
Nadia was not home—her father opened the door. When he saw that it was me, he refused to accept the gifts and closed the door. His reaction showed me that he still saw me through the old image formed before we had met in the spring of the previous year, and barely knew the real me at all.
However, at that moment I couldn’t leave without giving them the gifts. I rang the doorbell several more times, hoping that Nadia’s father would eventually open the door and take the box with the toy cat and the bag with the cognac, but no one opened it again. In despair, I looked around and noticed an electrical panel directly in front of me. After thinking it over briefly and weighing the pros and cons, I decided that I wouldn’t be committing a crime if I switched off the electricity in their apartment. I expected Nadia’s father would have to come out to turn the lights back on. Then I would give him the gifts and leave immediately.
However, he didn’t come out even after the lights went off. So I sat down by the door and waited. Voices came from inside the apartment: Nadia’s father was talking to his son, Nadia’s younger brother. That was how I realized that he was home too. Nadia’s father deliberately stayed inside, waiting for me to leave on my own. From time to time, he asked through the door:
— Are you still there?
— Yes, I’m here. Come out and take the gifts, — I replied.
In response, I heard laughter from inside the apartment. Imitating my “come out,” they joked:
— Leopold, come out!
Some time passed—perhaps about an hour. Nadia’s father called the police, and soon two police officers came up to the floor. I immediately understood that they had come because of me. Only then did Nadia’s father leave the apartment.
The police officers spoke with him first and then escorted me outside. They spoke to me calmly and kindly. One of them said that if I wanted to repair my relationship with a girl, I needed to approach the girl herself, not her father. After that, they told me to go home and drove away.
That could have been the end of it, but I was too agitated and stubborn, and I was still under the influence of alcohol. The gifts were still in my hands, along with the obsessive thought that I had to give them to their intended recipients. So instead of going home, I went back upstairs.
This time, Nadia’s father came out, and we had a short but tense conversation. I no longer remember exactly what I said to him. I can reconstruct not my words, but the image of myself from which I was speaking at the time.
I felt that I had been treated unfairly. By then, I had already been through and overcome a great deal. I had been left without parents at an early age, built my life on my own, earned a degree in journalism, worked as a programmer, and created complex systems. At work, I was treated with respect. In my own eyes, I was a person who had overcome difficult circumstances, managed to make something of himself, and was doing important work. That was why I saw myself as someone worthy of respect, rather than as the image that, I felt, Nadia’s father saw in front of him.
At the same time, the difficult events of 2011 and 2012 came back before my eyes. I was determined to defend myself and my destiny, not retreat in the face of obstacles, and fight for justice. As an orphan who was accustomed to fighting for his own life, I genuinely felt that what was happening then was a continuation of that struggle.
Nadia’s father knew nothing about the context of my life’s difficulties or the importance I attached to my own path. Therefore, my words may have sounded to him like bravado, an attempt to show off, or simply strange reasoning. I don’t remember exactly what phrases all of this turned into under the influence of alcohol. I remember only his reply:
— Nadia was right to leave you.
Those words hit me hard. Once again, I felt that I was being judged not for who I was, but according to someone else’s distorted idea of me. Resentment, helplessness, and a sharp sense of injustice became mixed together inside me.
Nadia’s father went back into the apartment, closed the door, and called the police again. I remained standing on the landing with the gifts in my hands, absorbed in what had happened. After a while, the same two police officers arrived again. They led me out of the building, put me in a service vehicle, and took me to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs Department for the Maryino District of Moscow.
At the station, the police officers sat me down on a bench in the lobby near the duty desk. Sitting there, I began explaining to them:
— Guys, I’ve been treated unfairly. They completely slandered me.
They listened and told me that if I had any complaints against those people, I could file a report. They gave me a form, but I didn’t want to turn what had happened into an official conflict. Instead of filing a report, I wrote down everything I was feeling at the time: resentment, despair, and outrage that they refused to listen to me. Then I crumpled up the paper and handed it to the police officers, showing that I wasn’t going to file a report.
They told me to remain there, and I continued sitting on the bench. By then, I had sobered up a little. Two other people were nearby, apparently drunk. Each was angry about something or at someone and voiced their grievances as if speaking into empty space. I looked at them, glanced around, and said:
— My God, who am I with?
The police officers noticed my reaction and laughed. After that, I wanted to leave as quickly as possible. Then an unexpected idea came to me:
— Guys, how about I wash the floors here for you?
The officers agreed and showed me the restroom, where there was a bucket and a rag. I took them, got down on my knees, and began washing the floors everywhere I could reach. After a while, the police officers stopped me:
— That’s enough. You can go home.
When I returned home, I went into my room and put the cat I had never managed to give away in the closet. Some time later, I called Nadia’s home. Someone picked up the phone but said nothing. In response to the silence, I said:
— Did you think I was going to stay there for long?
With this phrase, I wanted to make it clear that the police had not considered me a threat and had seen no reason to detain me or keep me under supervision. Perhaps after that I said something else about not intending to back down, but I no longer remember the exact words. Then I hung up.
After the call, I opened the bottle of cognac meant for Nadia’s father, turned on some music, and drank it to the last drop.
