Anya Romanova

Transcript

I am sitting on a bus next to my mother's coffin going to her funeral we didn't have money for her so it was a small coach bus from sporting my mother's dead body myself and my brother to the graveyard I remember looking outside the window at the raindrops thinking wow even the weather is grieving and crying with me except I wasn't crying on the outside I was too afraid to let myself cry and never stopped at fifteen years old my life was changed forever for the next four years I lived alone as a teenager in Estonia I remember coming home to the small dark apartment

nobody was cooking there nobody was watching TV nobody was talking on the phone nobody was laughing it was silent and dark Dean and they out for four years I prefer to ride buses in the evening somehow it felt safer to be on the bus around people than at home alone I remember smoking in a stairway of apartment buildings with other kids who also had nobody at home waiting for them we were all alone and abandoned singing playing the guitar and Naumann ourselves with booze and cigarettes those were lonely dark nights I felt the shame and abandoned I always worried about money as a fifteen year

old I try to budget for food necessaries and cigarettes always running out of money I felt so low-class soldiery and I was made fun of I think this is when I developed this little girl on the inside who didn't believe she was worried him of anything good it has been 21 years since my mother died and I still remember one thought that was going through my mind this is a from now on I'm on my own see my mother was the only person in my world who loved me unconditionally who would do anything for me and from now I'm on my own this became my

mantra I believed it so deeply that no matter how much people showed me care and love I have never let anybody in this has shaped my entire identity don't let anybody close to you because if people find out that you live by yourself they'll take you to foster home stop dreaming if you don't have a luxury of dreams you just need to survive pretend you're happy or else you're gonna lose all of your friends nobody wants to be friends with the Debbie Downer and friends for all I had and so I started to prostitute my soul and prostitute my heart and prostitute my values and

prostitute my integrity just to survive I trusted to it myself when I later married my ex-husband for stability I prostituted myself when I had kids at a young age out of fear of being alone I have prostituted myself when I took on jobs I hate it just to survive I would do anything to not be alone I would be friends with anybody to not be alone I would date anybody to not be alone I would literally sell my soul to not be alone and I kept on prostituting myself until there was nothing else to sell and I had to close the shop and retire those

are the formative years when we decide who we are and who we want to be our life circumstances dictate one story and yet we can choose a different story broke low abandoned I always knew I didn't belong there this would not be my life I just need to get through high school and once Mr I'm out of this country and I'll never come back the identity can choose you or you can choose your identity the world cannot tell who you are you tell the world who you are my transition to Canada wasn't easy there were a lot of challenges emotionally financially at my lowest point

I was assaulted by a stranger in a bar I found myself lying in a puddle of blood on a white tiled floor and him punching me over and over and over the fear the sweat the animalistic screams that came out of my chest it's in that moment that I had to decide who gets back up the destroyed victim or a strong woman who can find a way back to herself and learn how to see the humanity in others yet again those are the choices that dictate our identity this is when we choose who we are and I can tell you that now my life is

my choice I get to choose to belong or to be an immigrant with an accent hole never fear in I get to choose to create my own financial prosperity or sell out for security I get to choose to be a proud gay woman in love with another human being or a [ __ ] Dyke you don't get to tell me who I am I tell the world who I am our identity shaped in those decisions every day and in every moment I get to choose the woman I am today the woman I am becoming and so do you don't ever let the world tell you

who you are

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.