The black night calls my name

"I was born in Russia in 1994. It was a traumatic period following the collapse of the USSR, known as the "wild nineties." Although I was a child, this decade left a deep imprint on me. I remember well stepping over bodies of drug addicts sprawled on the stairwell. How syringes they used crunched underfoot during my walks near the house. The unpredictability felt when seeing the chaotic trajectory of a car driven by drunks. How on New Year's Eve, guys walked around with broken noses and spat blood. The demonic symbols painted on the windows of the sectarians' apartment. Pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion formed during the 90s became a part of my identity. But what if qualities inherent not only to victims but also to aggressors have seeped into me? Studying my own blind spots, I fear stumbling upon a monster nurtured in the nineties. The greatest threat to me is not diving into the frightening memories, but the risk of encountering inside myself an aggressor generated by that era. Trying to identify areas of uncertainty within myself, I come across the universal mechanism of unpredictability: the external environment influences us in ways that are impossible to foresee."