Happy Birthday Panic - PART ONE (story fiction) by Margarita Shamrakov.


It was my 30th birthday. Right before the date I started feeling very uneasy. I felt like stick in a can without oxygen, I could not breath, I felt the walls were closing in, I felt the blankets were falling, and the ceiling would kill me. I felt old.
Is 30 old? I think so. 30 years on earth, and I am not married, did not experience even true love, no big ups, just downs and struggle. I even lost faith in god...

As I prepared for my birthday party, my anxiety levels went up to 100 degrees Celsius. My heart started beating and it almost jumped out of my chest. My skin turned dry and flaky and wrinkly from stress. What am I celebrating again? Did you ever feel this way?

I put on a smile, but inside I was burning with anger and anxiety, almost any minute I would have a heart attack.

I felt I drowned and I started calling everyone, all my friends, my relatives, anyone to whom I could connect and explain my fear, and maybe someone has all the answers that I have been searching for. My Birthday attack took a full hold of me. This was not a joyful experience in any way, this was torture.

I even called my dad with whom I did not speak for 8 years now. I cut him off because he never supported me, never loved me, made fun of me, did not help me. I cut him off, because he made me cry, and for me it was a matter of survival , I knew if I keep communicating with him I will never recover from suicidal depression, I had to move on and survive.

But on my birthday I missed him, his great intellectual mind, his view on the world, his intelligence and brilliance. But his cruelty to his daughter? Why was he cruel with me?
Why he always put me down, and made me feel that I am nothing. Telling me I am not his daughter if I marry non-Jew, I am not his daughter if I behave in a certain way. I am not his daughter if I would become a stripper. Well I understand stripper is not the most prestigious profession, but I am his daughter and I wanted to be loved no matter what.
He brought me to America, and I am thankful for that. Although at the time that I came I was 17, and I did not value America too much yet, I was running away from my situation in the Ukraine, and my mom's abusive boyfriend. I was running away. And I had hopes that finally I will have a loving and secure family. Money did not mean much to me, being in America did not mean much to me, BEING secure and loved and not threatened meant everything, it meant LIFE! A good life!

SO I got to America, the first thing my dad did is he tore off my chain with a cross and said if you wear cross you are not my daughter and you can go back!
That was very soon after I arrived, in the airport. I understand his feelings towards Christianity being Jew. But He married my mom who was Christian, and who he knew practices, especially my grandmother. I am not Christian and I am no Jew, I do not know what I am, human I guess? Is it worthy anything? I come from an African Ape, that's where human species come from.

I do not think I want to judge him and say he is a monster, I think I just feel I need someone to hear my story and what it took for me, and how I went through it alone, and I need someone to hear me and justify me in a way.