Tamara

I can't stop thinking about her.

This woman from my birth country. Tamara Cheremnova /she is Russian and all this text is in Russian/. She is so strong and unbelievably happy, just kind of abnormal happy for her exact circumstances.

She was born on 1955. Almost right after (she was like about 2-3 year of age) she was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. It's terribly scary diagnosis by itself. But in addition to that she was given another one, even more terrible for her. She was named as retarded person. When she was 6 years old her parents just give up on her, because they couldn't give her appropriate care and so on. She was put in special school where she wasn't given any basic education at all. She didn't know how to write, how to read, basically she just didn't know anything by default.

And what made it really terrible for her, she was put in environment where she just couldn't get any education. Nobody really cared about those kids, nobody really tried to give them anything useful, anything to help them, they weren't feeling love. It's terrible thing, terrible. Love is what helps people to live basically. And they didn't have that.

But Tamara got real lucky because every terrible environment has little room for exclusion. There was one “crazy” teacher. Everybody just made fun of her like she was crazy. She tried to do for kids what they were not given by society – love. This “crazy” teacher taughtTamara some basic things, she read lots of books for Tamara. That was how Tamara got to the point of being a writer. But was still in that environment she needed to deal with. There was no “fairy tail” for her.

Even more then that she was kind of bullied by others (her "care givers"!!) all the time. Her basic rights were kind of stolen at that point. I really don't know and Tamara is telling same, even she doesn't know it for sure, how she surviving all that.

Well, one day she could get the second opinion and that most scary diagnosis was a history for her. She wasn't retarded any more, that “crazy” teacher actually helped Tamara to get that.

But what drove Tamara? What made her stay alive? She is a writer. She writes children books, she can't do it herself sometimes because of tremors and sudden moves but there are some wonderful people helping her. Now she is becoming kind of famous, but people who reads her books, people who actually making her famous don't really know that she is disabled. In their eyes she is just a wonderful person with big talent. That what she actually wanted all her previous life.

But what makes me real sad that she is still asking herself “why I'm here?” “who really needs me?” “who will ever appreciate what I do?”. Those are kind of questions lots of people asking themselves. The difference is that she really feeling like it. There is no point of light. Nothing. Just empty space.

I really understandf that because I was there for too long. Right now I found a oplace on Earth for my soul, I'm trying to find myself in this World. Identify myself. But her..............

I don't know the answer to any of those questions. I'm really afraid to tell her anything, because I'm in tears now and I don't want to burst into tears in front of her.

She is still in between the worlds of "nothing" and "happy". "Happy" is a really state of mind. And she decided to be happy. She decided............But is she?