All at once

How a fight with the neighbors reminded me of Russian colonialism.

The house of my dreams: flowers and no annoying neighbors around. Photo by Valentina Locatelli.

The neighbors with a crying newborn baby and loud friends who just moved downstairs complained that they can hear how my husband and I walk above them, and if we can stop walking, living, and preferably breathing, while they can be as loud as they want. While the situation is extremely annoying, I didn’t expect how much I would be triggered by it. Living through the trauma of war and colonialism, when your existence is constantly denied and erased, makes you very protective of your own space, but also afraid of taking too much of it at the same time. My heart was racing while I was composing a text reply explaining that I have the right to walk in my own apartment, just like these neighbors. It was eerily similar to the fights for my right to exist as a Belarusian in the face of Russian colonialism, as an immigrant, and as a woman in a highly patriarchal world. All fights at once were combined in this text exchange, and I felt that this was not only about me walking in my apartment, but about my right to exist and use my voice.

People don’t like it when I use my voice – not online, not in real life. I am expected to comply, to stay quiet, to accommodate the needs of others by putting my interests last, to keep my head low, to tolerate the noise from the neighbors, but never make a sound myself. I lost count of how many times I was told to know my place online. I lost count of how many times I was met with passive-aggression and anger when I stood my ground in real life. Growing up, I was taught that you should treat people the way you want to be treated. However, life quickly made me realize that with many people, the better you treat them, the more they take advantage of you and the less they respect you.

Recently, I found out that all the neighbors in our small apartment complex talk about me behind my back. It reminded me of all the online haters that I accumulated over the years of activism. People don’t like me because I refuse to suffer as a result of their actions, and I am not afraid to call them out. I realized that all the big and small battles I fight are all combined and connected, starting from asking neighbors to turn off the music late at night to fighting the centuries-long colonialism. I just wish I didn’t have to fight them all at once.

Two years ago, I wrote a poem after one person started to grammar correct every essay I published and sent me long emails pointing out my typos and supposed mistakes. I hope for the day when this poem stops being relevant.

June 2023

I tried to hide my accent for many years in a row,
I tried to “fit in” and avoid attention.
I was so tired of: “But where exactly are you from?”
No matter what I did, I couldn’t avoid those questions.

When I started to write and share my work online,
some people grammar policed me, because they “knew better”.
They searched for minor typos and mistakes in my work
and wrote to me that I should strive for perfection.

And I realized that the issue is not my accent or mistakes,
These people just don’t like it when I use my voice.
[woman] [immigrant] [Eastern European]
Choose a reason from the brackets, 
there is no wrong choice.

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I’ve been living in the same apartment since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The neighbors come and go. Maybe, if I weren’t living through so much stress and trauma, I would try to find a way to build better relationships with them. On the other hand, stress and trauma cleansed me from people-pleasing and taught me to stand up for myself. Before, I would be sad that the neighbors don’t like me, but as a person from the country that borders Russia, I know that I don’t need the love of annoying and toxic neighbors. All I need is for them to leave me alone.

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Email: daryazorka@substack.com

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