Vēstule manam Tēvam.

The System Child (original posted: 05.05.2017.)

This is one of my last childhood photos before getting into "The System". I am approximately 5 years old in it. In reality, I don't have many pictures even from those 5 years of my life. When I was old enough to realize that the pictures are worth saving many were already in a state to be thrown away…

The next pictures I have are from age 11. They were given to me by people who saw it important to give me memories. Then I was not able to appreciate them, but now I am thankful to everyone who gave me a photography.

I am a former "System Child". From the first to the third grades, I lived in a boarding school located 200 km from my hometown, and from grade five to grade nine, I lived in an orphanage in the same area my hometown was.

With this story, I want to tell how it feels to be a child in "The System" and as a grown up woman to analyze, why the people who work in "The System" start using violent methods.

The Beginning of the End:

My mom is sick. She has schizophrenia. The first time she understood something was not all right with her was in her 6th grade. She got scared from her own thoughts and trusted her feelings to the director of her school who sent her for check-up to the psychiatrist.  The psychiatrist sent her to the Jelgava Children's Psychiatric Hospital. With that, the bad thoughts ended. Years passed and mom completely forgot about that episode of her life. She went to school, lived, laughed, fell in love. I was born.

I will say straight forward that my father is only a bypassing figure in my life that I won't mention since this is a story about me as a "System's Child".

I remember vividly the moment that I felt something was wrong, something was changing. We were sitting in the grass near the bus stop, waiting for the bus to our town; my mom took a cigarette from her handbag and started smoking. I had never seen her smoking before.

I asked: "Mom, do you smoke?"

"Only one, I will not smoke anymore", she answered.

"Yes, please don't smoke, I don't like it", I requested.

Then I started the conversation that we had had before, about not liking the kindergarten I was attending, and asked her not to take me there anymore. And she said: "Yes, ok, we will change to another one."

I remember that as the moment when everything started to go down the hill. I started to attend a new kindergarten that I liked, but nothing was as it used to be at home. Mom started to smoke more often, the mom's voices began to haunt our home: the US President Reagan, the God. All of that scared me. Mom stayed in bed more often, smoked, sat with her back leaned to the side of the sofa and either kept staring at one point in the wall or actively conversing with the voices. Time after time she remembered about me, pulled herself together, prepared a meal, talked, but then again she was lost in her own world. I did not understand what was going on and why my mom keeps disappearing from me. Occasionally she ran to the window and shouted through the yard, which seemed funny for the other kids. I stood right there and cried and begged mom to stop.

They started to pay more attention to me in the kindergarten. The teachers started to worry about me, the director of the kindergarten showed an exceptional tenderness towards me and I got attached to her.

Then one day when I was playing in the yard, my mom came out, came to me and began to plait me braids. Strange people appeared. Mom finished plaiting my braids and disappeared. An unfamiliar woman asked me if I wanted to go to visit the director of the kindergarten and I answered that I wanted. As I said, that woman was very close to me.

A man that I did not know carried me to the car. I felt something was wrong but I could not fully understand what it was exactly. When the car has already been driving for a while, the woman told me I was not going to see the director today, but we were going to a place where I will live for a while together with other children. It was then, I think, that I was first told that my mom was sick, and that I was going to live at that place while mom gets better, and that it was not going to be for long for sure.

I was scared and blamed myself. I blamed myself for asking my mom to change the kindergarten because otherwise, I would have stayed in the previous one and my mom would not have got sick. I lived with this self-blaming until I was 12 when I trusted those thoughts to a woman who was important to me at that point of my life. She explained to me that such an illness does not originate from these situations. Until then no one ever asked me about my feelings.

The Boarding School:

The boarding school time is quite blurred in my memories. My body is still shaken in horror when I try to sort my memories of that time.

I don't remember the first day clearly. I only remember that I was brought to a huge hall with lots of children in blue uniforms and white collars. The children were standing in pairs and in groups according to the grades and were waiting to go to the canteen to have lunch. The women talked to other grownups there, someone came to me and brought me to the first grade kids. That someone told me: "Look, Jane (name changed), give her your hand, you will go to have lunch together". And someone from the children shouted: "Don't give her your hand, she has warts on her hands!" Everyone burst out in laughter. Jane stood there with her hand stretched out to me and waiting and I gave her mine. We became best friends in boarding school. Ironically, after years spent in the orphanage she was going to be the one to provoke my beating.

The canteen was huge, or maybe it seemed huge to me as a kid, but in my memories, it is huge, about 100 children eating there at the same time. The dishes were made of aluminum: aluminum bowls, cups, spoons. I still hear in my head the sound of those meals - the sound of the aluminum dishes, and how everyone rushed to eat because of the limited time allocated for lunch.

No one talked to me, no one asked how I was feeling, they simply put me as a small screw in a huge mechanism. I felt miserable. I was scared and I wanted to go home. To my mom. Even with all her voices.

I made myself a new ritual: every evening I prayed to God. You would rather call it bargaining. It went like: "Dear God, please, please, make my mom get well and make me return home! If you do that I will…" and I started counting all the things I hated doing and even things I was not able to do.

Do you remember how you searched for odd number lilac petals? I ate kilos of them, and I had only one wish: "I wish my mom gets well and I can go home!" Other girls were tearing petals of daisies counting "loves, loves not". I counted: "I will go home, I won't go home, I will go, I won't go". I thought about it with every step I took: if I jump over this stump, my mom is cured. If I get up this tree, my mom gets well. If I jump over the spring, my mom gets better."

And nothing happened.

The first grade was located in the same building where the dorms were. In the morning we got up, had breakfast and went to classes, had lunch, then again classes, homework and the afternoon snack (that you could get only after the homework was done) and then you could go out before dinner to play in the yard. We had two teachers. One was very nice and affectionate; the other one was sharp and shouting. When I arrived at the boarding school I did not know how to read, but I learned it fast. I remember the nice teacher being the motivator behind it. And I fell in love with reading. I started reading everything that came into my hands, without sorting or choosing, least it was a book. It was my shelter - in the books I could hide from reality. There was another world and the most important thing - there was no boarding school.

In the second grade, we went to classes to the big school. Only the shouting teacher was left. Her favorite was a guy from our class who stood out with his cruelty. When she had to go out of the class, she left him to keep control of the class. He enjoyed getting everyone on knees at the back of the class, stretch the hands far in front and then hit with a ruler while passing by. I don't remember if I was hit, but I do remember being really scared.

I was good at school, and that saved me. We were two girls who felt good because of completely different reasons: she was tidy and pedantic, but she had difficulties with learning. I instead was not tidy at all, I was chaotic, but had no problems with classes. I was yelled at in the dorms for being untidy, for ugly and inaccurate sewing of the collar (at the age of 7 or 8), and was praised at school instead. She on the other hand was praised for being tidy in the dorms, on sewing the collar properly, but was abused at school for not being able to learn.

You know, there is this funny thing - when a child has to go to sleep, he suddenly needs a drink or a snack, or needs to go to the toilet. And then we, the parents, while grinding our teeth, run to the kitchen for a snack or to the toilet for the potty and so on. But if there are 20 children in a room, it is even harder for them to go to sleep. They want to talk, tell a ghost story, jump in the bed. In the boarding school in order to keep the discipline, they punished us for being just kids.

Once I was punished for not going to bed on time. At the age of 7 I was standing in a dark hall with a cold floor, with my knees bent and my hands stretched far in front of me and a pillow on them. I don't remember how long I had to stand there but I remember when someone came and asked: "Well, will you go to sleep now?", and we always responded affirmatively, I was told: "Well, remain like this some more for a better sleep".

I remember a girl, Sandra. She had hysteric attacks, when she cried loudly, bellowing like an animal. She often sat on the side of her bed swinging herself: forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards. She could do that for hours. That was how she consoled herself. Other kids called her psycho. I often think to myself, how is she now….I would love to know she is all right.

One day a boy was brought in from a senior class. There were rumors that he came from a juvenile penitentiary. I remember one day he was standing in the middle of the hall with a wide wire or rub and hit it to the wall with all the force he had, like a lash. Everyone stood in a circle, far enough not to be hit, and laughed. But the laughter was nervous and frightened. Everyone feared that he could turn to any of us and hit with the wire. It looked like he was able to do that.

It is hard for me to remember anything good from the boarding school since the only positive thing was getting away from there. I am sure, however, there were good episodes. It is just that for me as a child it was so traumatic that my consciousness is unable to remember any good.

It didn't take long from arriving at the broadening school that I got the chronic gastritis. Still I was reproached: "That is form the hunger you had at home". The gastritis disappeared at age 15 when I left the boarding school.

Gastritis however was my other savior. I was often sent to hospitals. At the beginning, they sent me to the local one, but then father to the regional hospital. I spent a lot of time in hospitals. Still now, when I am in hospital, I feel like I am in a safe place. Doctors, nurses, cleaners, treated me with tenderness. They felt sorry for me and brought a sense of warmth to my unsafe, scary little world. When I look back at it now, I suspect that they let me stay in the hospital longer than needed because they saw my fear from the boarding school.

Because of gastritis, I was also sent to a sanatorium in Jurmala, a city by the sea. That time has remained in my memories as full of joy. No one knew that I came from a boarding school. I could be like anyone else. I lied and made up fantasies about my life. In this world, my mom was well and I was happy from those lies alone.

However, I started stealing. Other kids often had different snacks brought to them by relatives. I longed so much for what others had, and I started stealing from them. Of course, it was noticed, but they could not find the culprit. I used tricks to fool them. I stole something but put a piece of it in another girl's locker, and she was caught. But after a while, they caught me myself red-handed.

My mom, still in her own world, sometimes got herself together and came to visit me. It was a feast for me! Mom always brought many tasty snacks. Since she could never go back the same day, she could stay with me overnight and we slept in the same bed. That was my moment of happiness: to feel my mom so close next to me. Every time she left, I begged her to take me with her; I told her I was not well there. And one day she did - she took me away.

At home:

I spent almost 2 years at home. No one really paid attention to my mom or me.

In September, I started the 4th grade at the city school. Nothing had changed at home. Mom still heard the voices, time after time, she tried to pull herself together and take care of me, but she did not entirely succeed in that since the voices were dictating the rules.

At school I was the one that was laughed at - dirty, sometimes with lice, I stank and shrank into myself. I was also laughed at in the backyard. I had a couple of friends, who are still close to me, but in general, I was afraid of the other kids, I never knew what I would be laughed at about the next day.

I lied at school. I lied that I had beautiful dolls at home - it was the time when Barbie's appeared in shops, the ones with the bending knees. If you believed my stories, my home was a castle. The books I had read helped me build those fantasies.

I remember once two girls from my class accompanied me home to see all those wonders. Of course, they did not believe me. I still remember that feeling - trying to figure out what to do. Honestly, I do not remember how it all ended. But I do remember how humiliated and miserable I felt.

More and more often I started to feel as a lower class person, not normal, worse. And all because of my own fault - if I had not asked my mom to change that kindergarten then, my mom would still be well. It was my own fault that I had become to be a problem myself. That was how I felt.

People from our house started to notice me and could not remain indifferent to the situation I was in. 

I remember one day walking past the window when a woman appeared in it asking me: "Karīna, are you hungry?" "Yes," I replied. She invited me to come in. She had a daughter approximately my age that I made friends with quite quickly. And I started frequenting them for lunch. They took it as self-evident. Every time I went to see my friend, that girl, they put a plate on the table for me without asking and invited to have a meal before play.

Another friend's mom looked as an angry woman and all the children from the yard feared her. It seemed that the only child not afraid from her was I because she always treated me with care and tenderness. She felt compassion for my mom and her fate.

Relatively soon also the teacher of my class started worrying. She started visiting us at home and found out the situation we were at. And she realized I could not be left at home.

In the middle of the fifth grade, I was taken to the orphanage, again with an excuse "for as long as your mom is sick, then you can go back".

Orphanage:

At the beginning, the orphanage seemed promising. There were a lot less children than in the boarding school. The premises were cozier and the director was a nice, hearty woman who hugged and comforted me as I arrived. I hadn't experienced that before.

There was my best friend from the boarding school that I was so happy about.

And there was hope - it was going to be all right. I could stay here while my mom was sick.

I was not an aggressive child. I studied, I read. In general, I was the good kid, and it was not hard to feel warmth towards me.

Of course, we also had "problematic kids" at our orphanage who were full of rage and did not obey. Now, as a grown-up, I understand why they were that way. They were hard to deal with, or, to be honest, were impossible to deal with.

There was a person working as the Head of Housekeeping. He had this strong belief that you could achieve obedience with a stick. He had quite an influence on the opinion of the director. And at some point, from despair, without knowing what to do, he started to believe his methods could work in dealing with the "problematic kids".

We started to witness episodes when those kids were beaten for some inadequate or aggressive behavior. And we saw that as normal. We looked at it as "he got punished for what he had done".

I was around 11 years old when I was brutally beaten by a bunch of kids. It was late in the evening and I had said something wrong about a girl. She had told that to my boarding school's best friend. And that girl was friends with a certain guy, an authority among children.

I remember sitting in the room, they came in, started pushing me and I ran to hide in the toilet. I hid in the corner and cried. That guy took me by the throat, pulled close to him and said: "This is for the bad things you said about that girl!" And he threw me back to the floor. Then another boy hit my head with his leg and my head hit the wall.

Then I think I went hysteric. I only remember I wanted to die. I did not see other solutions for my life. The death at that point seemed the only way out. I wanted to get rid of that pain, humiliation, despair and fear. I had nowhere to run.

I think someone ran and told to the night shift teachers that I was about to commit suicide. And I remember two fears from their side:

1) fear that I could commit suicide,

2) fear that the management could find out about that fight.

I did not say anything to the management. Firstly, I though t it was my fault for saying bad things about that girl. If I had not told that, I would not have been beaten. Secondly, I did not believe anyone could help me. What I had understood at the age of 11 was that I only had myself. No one could help me. And there was none to believe.

Contrary to the boarding school where classes where held in the same premises, the orphanage children went to the same school other kids did.

In that school I attended, I do not remember a single friend I had, from the "city kids". We, the orphanage children, kept ourselves aside. And it was then and there I started to feel how differently we were treated by the "normal people". People stayed away from us, they did not think we were normal; we were a synonym to the word "problem". We did not feel as normal and that's how we were seen by the others. More and more a perception grew inside me that I am worse than the others are, because others had families, home, but we were a heard no one wanted.

The Head of the Housekeeping started to have mood swings - there were good days and bad days, and we always waited to find out which day was today. I was never beaten by him since I was "the nice kid". But the "problematic kids" got beaten…However, every time he said a sharp word it was an even deeper hit to my heart and my self-esteem.

I always waited to see the director instead, she was always nice and sincere, and I could give her a loving hug.

Approximately after a year the orphanage was moved to another town. I was in the 6th grade in a new school. The school was located a couple of kilometers father away, in another little town. Every morning I took the public bus to the school. I remember my first day there - I had and electro-green knit suit - a jacket and a skirt, I was so shy and stood in front of the class hiding my face behind my hands.

In this school, I met a woman who taught us German. She started paying attention to me. She was acquainted with the director of the orphanage and probably at some point in their conversations, she found out why was I at the orphanage. It turned out her mom was sick with the same thing mine was. I started visiting them for one day, then for two, a week, a month. She had a son who was happy I had come into their lives. And she with her husband tried to make me feel home. What she did not notice is that I was already ruined by then.

I could not see the good anymore. While I was with them, not for a single second I let myself think that was there because I could be loved. At first, I thought it was because her mom had the same illness mine did. Then I thought they were just being polite. Not for a single second I allowed myself to think I was there for myself, that someone could get attached to me, that I could be loved. Because I was from there - from the orphanage and children from there are not loved. Only after many years, when I was about 28 years old, after years in therapy, I accepted that I was in that family because of me myself.

They tried hard to teach me simple everyday things. The woman talked and explained to me a lot. However, all I heard through was "you are not normal, you are bad". And more and more shrank into myself. They noticed I loved reading. She had a fantastic home library, and I loved that room. I met Jane Eyre, Scarlett from "Gone with the wind" there and many others. She noticed I first read the end of the book and only then started reading it from the beginning, but she taught me to leave the suspense to myself. Still I was afraid from a sad ending. She also taught me to notice the author and title of the book that I did not pay attention to before. I just took a book and devoured it.

She was the one noticing I was not entirely left handed. I only wrote with the left hand but did all the rest with the right one. Her husband taught me to answer with more than "Ok'" to the question "How are you?"

But I could not hear their words through the damaged prism of my thoughts. I was not able to see the love there. And when I left the orphanage at the age of 15, I also shut the door closed for them.

That woman also ended my illusions of my mom getting better one day and me going home. She explained to me gently that such illness was for life. It was always going to stay in mom's life. She was also the one explaining to me that my mom's illness was not my fault.

Every day more and more I longed to be like the others - normal. Not the one pointed at with a finger and whispered behind her back "she is from the orphanage". I felt like a second class kid, but I wanted to be with the normal ones.

Many children from the city went to a music school. I asked the director if I could attend as well. She signed me up and I soon started to learn to play the flute. I was not the best student but I loved playing. Music calmed me down. Many years after, when I already studied in the capital, Riga, at stressful times I hummed symphonies of Mozart to myself.

I also joined the orchestra. That was another break from the daily environment. We frequently performed and participated in orchestral get-togethers. We went to other towns for 2 or 3 days. But the feeling never left me that I was different. I didn't have any pocket money like other kids, but I had lots of cheese sandwiches. For children it is of utmost importance to fit in. And when you are already broken even details like these are traumatic.

When I lost the illusion of going home soon, something changed inside of me. More often I started figuring out how to become like the others. How to get away from the orphanage. I think a grownup was awaken inside of me at that point. I understood I could not wait anymore to be saved, I had to act myself.

In the school I attended, I was not really picked at or called names, but I was already broken inside, I felt rejected and different. I had two friends, girls, who looked for my company themselves. When I stayed at that woman's place, we walked home together, talked about girl things, and on the surface it could seem I was there, but I wasn't. I was different; I was not a city kid. Every time someone started talking to me at school, I was afraid there was a particular interest behind that talking, it could not come from the heart.

I decided to change school to the elementary school in the town of the orphanage. The grownups did not understand my decision, tried to persuade me to stay in the city school since it offered a higher quality education. I explained it was difficult for me to get up so early every morning to get to that school, but in reality I had just decided to start all over again. I wanted to change the mask of the shy girl to the mask of a socialite.

I decided to finally become part of the society. I wished to be loved and wanted as a friend. I longed to prove that I was worth it. I left school and burned all bridges, also to the nice girls who wanted to be my friends. They were a quiet reminded of my insecurities and modesty, and fear. If anyone would have been able to get inside my mind then, the reasons for such behavior would have been clear, but nobody did.

My "resurrection" was successful. I quickly gained new friends. When meeting with them recently they admitted that there was this general perception of stupid orphanage kids, but they somehow accepted me naturally. My friends were my haven. I had two lives: one in the orphanage that was really a survival, and another one - with my friends, where everything was easy and careless. I didn't tell anyone what was going on in my mind. That was my big secret. I realized soon if I wanted to be like the others, I must keep my pain and low self-esteem to myself.

At the same time, the "problematic kids" of the orphanage grew up. They became more aggressive, full with hate, inadequate. Everyone was afraid of the Head of the Housekeeping. If earlier the violent methods were directed only towards the "problematic kids", now all of us were afraid that we could get hit. Once a girl did not say "thank you" to him and got hit by a wallpaper roll on her back.

A psychologist appeared in the orphanage. That was something new. She asked every single child to go and talk to her and draw something. It was the first person trying to see inside us, behind our masks. Soon director started to press on her to tell her what the kids were telling. She refused and a tense situation evolved among the employees.

There were older girls who ran off to the discotheque in the city sometimes, that other kids of their age attended. Various times, they were caught and scolded. And then another time came when they were caught. It was a late night. Many had already gone to sleep. But we were all gathered in the great hall that was usually used for concerts. Both girls were brought in front and mandated to take their clothes off, leaving just the bras. They were beaten and their hair was cut. And the others were warned to have the same fate if caught going to the discotheque and also for telling about this to anyone at school.

I remember all of us standing there in silence. The aggressive "problematic kids" who would usually laugh when someone was humiliated were also silent. You could feel that everyone was sorry for the girls. I remember thinking to myself: "How lucky I am not to be in their position!" I had already started thinking of attending a disco and I think I also had already attended one.

After what happened both girls were in their room crying and laughing, then again crying and laughing. Time after time someone from us walked into their room, but no one said any mocking comment. I think it was the only moment when all felt united and together. The girls corrected the hair for it to look more like a hair cut, and we all went to school on Monday morning. We never said anything to anyone.

But that was not it.

Some employees of the orphanage could not live further with this event in mind and understood that something had to be changed. The responsible institutions started getting signals that there was something wrong in this orphanage. An investigation started, the director, the Head of the Housekeeping and a couple of more employees were suspended from their duties for the time of the investigation. Do you know what our reaction was when that happened? We cried, we begged our director to be let come back, we wrote letters that we are going to wait for it.

After a while we felt that the life in the orphanage is calmer. Then we were informed that the case was closed, and that the director is coming back. The Head of the Housekeeping was coming back as well.

I remember sitting in my room when a girl came to me from the "opposite front" and asked: "Did you hear the director is coming back?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Cool, isn't it?" she continued without an enthusiasm in her voice. We knew our life was going to bring back fear and guessing the mood of the Head of the Housekeeping on a particular day. We were sitting there, talking about it, when someone got the courage to tell that she did not want the things to go back to the previous again. And all agreed.

It all came to a moment of 7 children running away from the orphanage, two boys did not come back but went to live in another orphanage. And after a huge scandal the director was laid off after all.

Talks went around the town on what happened and my friends started asking if that was true. I confirmed. No one understood why I hadn’t spoken before. Instead, I had always been smiling, cheerful and funny.  As if everything had been fine.

The episodes of violence from the side of the teachers ended. But no one told them how to treat the "problematic kids". they were not able to manage them. To have the least amount of control, there were constant threats: "If you don't stop the rampage, you will get a syringe". I don't remember anyone getting a syringe. The kids were going around the town, looking for empty bottles in the garbage, cigarettes, they were stealing. I distanced myself from that as I infiltrated among the "normal” kids.

Soon I got enemies in the orphanage. While I was walking home in the evenings, I always hoped not to meet anyone in the yard, not to be noticed. But I hid my fear deep inside and just went in. I knew, if I showed my fear, I was going to be trampled down and devoured.

I was very chaotic and untidy (I must confess, I am still not the most pedantic person on earth). And the employees were not able to change that. Once a friend came to visit me from the town. Town kids rarely came to me - we usually met just outside the territory of the orphanage. I don't know why but exactly on that day I had tidied up my room.

While we were sitting there with my friend and talking, the door opened and the teacher and nurse came in saying: "Karina, open your closet, we need to check the tidiness." I opened the closet and they were both so disappointed. The teacher murmured: "Ok, well…" and they both left. I started crying, and my friend suggested leaving. As we were going through the forest, we both cried. I cried from the humiliation, she cried because her heart hurt for me and she could not understand how one could behave like that. I felt even worse and more humiliated.

Then I became older and started to use alcohol and smoke. Anger and aggression rose inside me. If earlier I just felt fear, destruction, low self-esteem, then now it was all covered with aggression, anger and hate. I flew into a rage fast and became less obedient in school.

Someday I didn't do something I was asked to do by the teacher and she shouted: "You stupid orphanage girl, nothing will become of you! You will lose yourself in prostitution and alcoholism." Just this one sentence describes the whole attitude to us - orphanage children. Instead of response, I shouted: "Go fuck yourself!" and ran off school.

More and more I felt anger towards everyone around me. And I swore to myself: "I will show to all of you! I will achieve much more than all of you together! You will see who the lost one here is!"

The graduation of the primary school was approaching. Everyone assumed I was going to continue to study in the high school. But I saw just one possibility - the only possibility to get away. I made a plan: I had to make it to the professional school, where I would get the high school education and a profession, and then I would get a job somewhere to make a career. This was my plan that I stuck to.

I found a professional school in Riga, where together with the high school program I could get the professional qualification of secretary-clerk, and I applied.

At the beginning of the summer, I agreed with the new director of the orphanage that during the summer I could work as the cleaner in the group of the small children. All summer I was cleaning floors, because I wanted to be able to buy new and stylish shoes that all city girls had as I took off to my new life. I got the money and joyously ran to buy myself those shoes (they were 3 sizes bigger, but I bought them anyway), I also bought a lot of sweets and cigarettes, I even paid for the entrance in the discotheque myself for the first time in my life (before that someone else always paid for me) and happily waited for my new life.

The day approached when I had to leave for Riga. I got to know that my first allowance was going to be on the 20th of September. I went to the director of the orphanage and asked for money to survive until then. And she said: "No! You had money to live until the 20th of September." And I told her: "But I earned it, it was my salary and I spent it." She replied: "I don't care. It's your problem. Survive as you want."

And so, without a cent in my pocket and with a torn sports bag, a couple of pieces of clothing and lots of anger and hate I left for Riga.

Riga:

How did I survive until that 20th date? I was supported by a girl who proposed to be friends on the first day we met. Again, I depended on the cordiality of other people. But not for a single moment I imagined I could turn to someone and ask for help.

The first years in freedom were wild: I drank a lot of different quality alcohol, I tried many substances, I faked passport copy and went to the night discos, I constantly had problems in the dormitories - I was one of the aggressive, bad girls. On Mondays we usually were "called to the carpet" at the Head of Studies office for the usual wandering during the nights.

Once the Head of the Studies could not make it anymore and threw us, three girls, out of the dorms. So I have spent one night on the street because I didn't have anywhere to go. And all of this happened during the time when formally I was under the state protection.

For a couple of times I went to visit the orphanage, but then I decided to quit. I hated it there.

It coincided with the time when I had put my mom in a hospital, her illness was healed to some extent and she returned to us. For a long time. For 10 years she did not have an aggravation of the illness. And no one cared where I was. I was 15 and formally I was still in state care.

My self-esteem had hit a rock bottom. But I hid it well under the mask of bravado.  I did not tell anyone how miserable and how ugly I felt. I kept falling in love with guys who treated me the worst, they humiliated me and I humiliated myself. The good guys who felt in love with me - I was not able to reply with the same. I felt I did not deserve such attitude.

I was regularly balancing on the edge between wild parties in crazy and shady places and the school, with my goal flashing in my mind time after time.

When I visited my hometown, I was full of bravado, I borrowed clothes from my friends to look more stylish. I went with my head up. And everyone thought I was arrogant, but in reality that was anger. Anger for the experienced humiliation.

When the summer came, me and my mom, we both understood that we were not going to make it with her small pension and I, at the age of 15, started to work in a cafe in the capital. The work started at 9 in the morning and finished at 4 the next morning. I had to learn to talk to strangers. "Smile, Karina, smile!" was a frequent phrase said to me by the manager of the cafe. I could not control the first glimpse I gave a person. Both suspicion and a wall "don't come close to me" were both seen in my eyes.

I got my first big money. I bought myself clothes in a stylish store. Before I counted the change and bargained in the market for Turkish clothes. That summer I started smoking expensive cigarettes.

And so my study years passed: in summers I was like a king, but counting change during the school year. I did not know how to save money for later. I did not know hot to deal with money in general. One day I had it, the next I didn't. I had a huge chaos in my head, but there was always someone by my side who, without knowing it, gave me energy to go back to my goals.

I could talk long about what happened after the orphanage. But in a couple of words - I left it broken, unknowing life and full of hate. For years I never talked about how I had felt, how I felt and what I experienced. There were moments when it broke free but I quickly got myself together, hiding it all deep inside of me. And I hid my "origins". Otherwise you were not deemed to be normal.

About 26 years old when I already had made a successful career and had stable income, travels twice a year, my brain loosened up and my sub consciousness started releasing all that was hidden. I had achieved my goals and did not know what to do next. I could not get myself together and became apathetic, depressive, could not get things done around me. I could only get myself together to go to work, put all my energy there and then again fell back in the apathy. But the stimulus to go into therapy was my fear to get sick with the schizophrenia.

I spent around 4 years in the therapy, once a week. It was my daily life. My body protested. Psychosomatics appeared. Every time on my way to the therapy, I had cramps. My body cried: "What are you doing? You hid it! Don't get that out!"

The therapist needed a long time until I slowly started speaking about my childhood, the experiences, the feelings, the visual memories. And only in therapy I started remembering not only the bad, but also the good.

I remember sitting in front of her and starting to speak about a nice childhood episode, she looked at me and smiled: "You see, Karina, there was also something good!" And I thought - indeed. There was also something good. And I came to see it at the age of 28. Before that my sight was blurred by hate, anger, fear and pain.

I remember the first time when I went from Riga to the orphanage for the weekend. Me and a couple of kids and the teacher went through the forest. I told her how happy I was to be away from that nightmare for once. She was hurt by that. She asked: "But, Karina, don't! There were good things as well!"

Dear teacher, if we went through that forest today and you asked me that question, I would answer: "Yes, there were good things. A lot of them."

And we would remember how we, all kids, went to your countryside, baked potato pancakes in the bonfire. It was there that I learned the most delicious pancake recipe that I still use.

We would remember how you taught us national dances, how we went to another town to dance in the town festival. How we went to swim in the sea and gathered blackberries in the forest.

I would remember how the new Head of Housekeeping secretly bought me biscuits and other tasty things for my music school trips so that I did't have to go only with loads of sandwiches.

I would remember the cook that we went to see in the kitchen and made such a mess that she threw us out and we ran off laughing and grabbing slices of bread on our way.

But then I didn't see it. I was able to see it only at the age of 28 thanks to the therapy.

The System:

And now I have a question to all the responsible institutions - HOW MANY of the former “System’s Children” can afford a therapy once a week when one session costs 40.00 EUR? If you can answer to this question, then you have the number of the “The System's Children” not wandering around broken.

Aggression in the orphanages IS the fault and problem of “The System”. You hand an orphanage to a manager without giving him support - you only give a task - to handle it. On one hand, you need an order there, but on the other hand, all you give instead of support are pages of laws and regulations. There are families who cannot handle a single teenager. Bet there you have children who come also from very inhuman environments. We don't know what they have been through. They are so desperate, angry and hurt that the only form they know to show those emotions is by rage, hitting and simply not obeying. Under that huge mask of aggression, a very, very wounded child hides. But if you don't know how to see him and how to handle him, you won't.

It is very hard to work with children like that and we don't know what kind of people we would become while dealing with them. What would our reactions or actions be? There are very few people who work in “The System” and who really have the talent and knowledge about such children. But to the most part it is just the salary work to feed their families. They don't have the necessary psychological knowledge.

Once and for all, stop writing off with laws and regulations, and blank forms, and think about the PEOPLE.

Please, give therapeutic support and supervision both for the employees and the children. Don't make the employees fear for their jobs. It is an extremely hard and difficult job, and the only way to improve the environment and the situation is by talking about it and analyzing it.

And don't give up on "problematic children" too soon. They have to be fought for until the last one. And you can only achieve something while he is just a kid.

To all the Latvian society, I would like to say: "Please, accept, try to understand and give opportunity to the orphanage children. Not one opportunity - tens of them!" Every Christmas I watch people collecting plush teddy bears and other toys for those children. But give them the most valuable - open your hearts to them, don't turn away, don't put a "orphanage child" stamp on them. I needed many years to understand that I am not worse than the others. That I also deserve love, without any special reason. And a huge part of my trauma was exactly due to the attitude of the local society against the orphanage children.

The former orphanage children can be divided in two types: one part is able to integrate into the society, but carry pain and resentment until the end of their lives. Usually they hide their "origins" and don't talk about their experience. The other part come out of the orphanage so broken that they cannot get themselves together and take the easiest path known to them - they lose life in alcohol, their children end up in orphanages again, they end up in prisons…And we cannot blame them for that.

I was lucky, because people who brought warmth and love regularly came into my life. I was not able to appreciate it then but it remained somewhere in my sub consciousness. But if you are "the problematic child", normally you are being feared from and given up on, no one gives you warmth and tenderness.

The System will improve only when you will start acknowledging to yourself that there is a problem and it's huge. And everyone understands very well that it is a complicated task and there is no single solution. As a former “System’s Child”, I propose:

1. Provide a therapist in all the orphanages. Both for the children and the employees.

2. Prepare the children for life - don't throw them out. All of a sudden, a person does not become an adult at the age of 18 (in my case at the age of 15).

3. DONT' GIVE UP on problematic children.

4. Criticize and concentrate on problems. It is exactly the identification of problems and their possible solution that will help improve the situation.

Today I am able to say that I am proud of myself. I still have many issues to solve. Now my brain is busy with care of two small children and building a new career. But I know, when the day comes, I will return to the office of my therapist. Because not all is yet solved, there are still a lot of questions remaining. But all of that would not exist if someone had not started to talk to me and work with me.

(added 12.12.2018.)

A lot has changed in Latvia in a year and a half. The major change is the shift in society's perception to the one that children do not have to grow up in orphanages. The only right place for a child to be is a family. But we still have a lot to do with this issue.

We have strengthen and amplified the foster family network, the deinstitutianalisation plan is under way (the closure of big orphanages and the opening of small ones), but it is of utmost importance to realize and understand that we are at the beginning of the road.

I am glad to see the foster family, guardian and adopter movement activating, but I do not support and do not believe that the right place for a child to live is a mini orphanage.

Does a child has to live in a place where he is someone's job? Where there is a frequent change of employees? In a place he will have to leave at the age of 18 without a place to go back to celebrate holidays or eat mom's pancakes?

An orphanage with good teachers and an orphanage with violence have something in common - a child is someone's JOB there, but a child needs a home and at least one person of attachment to have a relationship with - longer than just until he is 18.

Look at your child and imagine - if something happened to you, would you want him to grow up in a small orphanage? Is that the best you could wish for your child? If not, why would other children deserve that?

It is extremely important to realize that we will always have orphanages (at least the small ones), if we do not start working with the children's biological families right away. The preventive work in the country is in a catastrophic state - and I dare to say it out loud - there is none.

The children are taken from the families, but there is no work done with the parents. Often a family with 6 to 8 children comes to the attention of the social services. It is very difficult to find a foster family for such a big group of siblings, and they automatically end up in the orphanage. Is that a solution? No, that is just patching holes - the best of the worst solutions

The basis of everything is the preventive work. The rest are consequences. And it is impossible to solve the problem without getting to its roots.

We, the grown-ups, are the only hope for a better life to those kids. We are the only hope of so many children yet to be born. Every move we make, every signed paper has a living person behind it. We have a hard work ahead, but we can build a better world.

 Therefore I kindly ask the state and the local authorities - let's build a new house! And let's start with laying its foundations - the preventive work!