Stanislava Romanova

All my childhood, my parents raised me to be a “good girl.” And for a “good girl,” experiencing — let alone expressing — negative emotions was forbidden.

But whenever I stepped outside the boundaries of what was considered “normal” — or, more accurately, convenient — I heard the same phrase:

Strangely enough, those words would always wash over me with guilt, as if I had genuinely done something wrong.

And so little Stasya grew up without knowing what she actually felt. She suppressed it.

I wasn’t allowed to react to other people’s aggression either. So inside me, a terrible sense of injustice and shame kept building — shame for not defending myself. There was a whole knot of emotions humming inside my chest, like a kettle coming to the boil. And whenever those emotions did manage to break through, I was immediately overwhelmed by an absolute, crushing sense of guilt.

Life went on, throwing one challenge after another at me. But swallowing that knot of emotions became harder and harder — until it had grown into the size of a boulder.

My personal boundaries were like a loose garden gate that people kept trying to push their way through.

My reaction? Either I exploded — followed by guilt. Or I froze — followed by exactly the same guilt.

No wonder that by the age of eighteen, I had become attached to weed. Mary Ivanna, as I called her, gave me something no one else could: a blissful sense of not giving a fuck, and freedom from the swarm of obsessive thoughts inside my head.

It postponed my realization of the problem.

Until I chose sobriety.

And now, for the third year, I’ve been torn apart by the realization that all this time I had been suppressing a wild predator inside me.

There is so much aggression and so many other repressed emotions raging inside me that sometimes I feel like if even one person spits into my soul, I’ll drop onto all fours, attack them, and tear them to pieces.

I am a wild creature who was raised to be obedient livestock.

I was taught to put up with people who came to me with a whip — and was told that this was normal.

They are the ones depicted in this painting as fucking restorers, erasing everything I am capable of feeling.

I’m writing this, and there is fire burning inside me.

And it isn’t fear.

It is my true nature, growling somewhere around my heart.

It wants to be free.

It wants to get down on all fours and finally attack.

It craves fresh meat and warm blood.

It wants to express itself.