Confession of the kept woman

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«My name is Svetlana. I am a kept woman. For someone this word will cause disgust, someone will be interested, and for someone it won’t matter. My confession is not about moral principles. Every human chooses his own path in life. While standing at the end of the line, he will answer to the Savior himself. It’s also happened to me: I am at the last line. No, I do not regret the life lived. It is not possible to fix anything… If I had the opportunity to go back, I would rewrite some moments, but life is not a manuscript, you can’t redo it. Why had I decided to take this step – to create my diaries? Probably, every person, when his days are close to end, wants to leave something behind to be remembered. I lived an exuberant life, but, frankly, empty. Maybe my confession will serve as a good lesson for those people who also burn their life.

My story began simply. I was born in one of the republics of the former USSR. The younger generation, oh how strange it already sounds for me, although I’m still 37 years old, does not know those times when it was necessary to stand behind a sausage in a long line, and in order to buy foreign-made boots, take turn in the evening and stand whole day. And these boots were the pinnacle of happiness for a young girl. And nearby was totally different life. People in expensive at that time cars drove around the city, throwing a look at the long «sausage» queue. Their companions, dressed in expensive mink coats, which we, ordinary girls, had only to dream of, with arrogance, left these expensive cars to buy the next expensive jewelry. And somewhere, just a hundred meters away, there were people who were no different from these, in expensive cars. Maybe only because they are just people who also want not to stand in line for their boots, not to spend time behind the shops, thinking about how and what to feed their families. They just wanted to live. It was a time when the old was dying, and the new was still unable to grow. Then one household motto was popular: «Be like everyone.» Beautiful motto, by the way, and very convenient for the elite in expensive cars. All in those days were cut with the same comb. The same clothes (simple things that created the grayness of the human mass), the same type of food… Even then, as a teenager, an internal rebellion against this way of life was arising in me. I could not understand why my mother, who gave so many years of her life to the factory, cannot afford to buy a more expensive and elegant dress? Why is the father, the foremost worker who «lives» at the factory, constantly repairing our old car to take us to the country during the weekend, where we have to work hard and long while growing vegetables – the only salvation, according to mom, in a hungry winter? I had many unanswered questions in those years.

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At this time, a girl transferred to our group from another faculty. She sat in the audience next to me, and we started talking to her. Olga, that was her name, really became my friend for many years. You could even say for life. And now, when my days are numbered, Olga does not leave me alone. She helps me not only financially, but also morally. Thanks to Skype and other new technologies. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and think about sad things. At that time, the time of our youth, I did not want to think about anything bad. We girls did not understand why the abbreviation of our country suddenly changed, why people died under tanks, and why my father’s business were closed in one month. No, of course, in general, everything was clear, but the depth of the problems that people would face in those years was not clear to us. We have not yet felt the approach of the time when one after another the enterprises will fall apart, when in a very short time my father will grow old and goofy, his mother will turn gray with grief. All this was in the near future. We just wanted to live. And we lived. Met with the guys. We smoked a little, drank a little. There were parties, there were gatherings.

In this period of my life I was waiting for my prince. I wanted to be in his arms and see the stars again. I was kissing with the guys, hugging, but the last bastion did not give up. The guys did not have that highlight that I saw in Vadim. Although there was plenty to choose from. The guys at our institute were great. But, alas, I could not find Him yet. So Olga and I spent time meeting with one or the other. The two of us were having fun. We complemented each other. Then fate scattered us in different countries. Olga went to live in foreign countries.

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