OFF_press

Sometimes, when writing about Poland, I find myself crying. When the tears come, my first reaction is to check myself for self-pity. Am I getting sentimental? Is it automatic need? Everyone needs a good sob now and then. Or is it the overwhelming power of my own prose that has me crying with joy?

Ignoring the comedy value of that last sentence, the answer is far from funny. Poland, it seems to me, has been raped by history. I know this is a dangerous, discomforting statement, and I’ll be contradicting it soon enough, but first let me elaborate.

I’ve spent the last year working with Polish people in the UK on various integration and cultural projects. Time and time again, I’ve been astounded by the amount of grief we seem capable of inflicting on one another. Fights in the press. Within community groups. Between cultural centres. Not in Poland. Here, in this land of plenty. We all know we do it. We all complain about it. None of us has, so far, come up with a solution.

Why are we doing this to ourselves? Our past is one of progressive thinking in arts, science and politics. Poland, all of her cultural and ethnic heritage, survived over a century of total absence from world maps not that long ago. Shortly after, trapped between two of history’s greatest villains, we still managed to lead the way in defeating both fascism and communism. Always on the edge of empires, always hurt by the forces of history, always fighting to preserve who we are. I’ll say it again – fate has abused the Polish nation.

Rape, of course, is the wrong word to use, from a purely physical point of view. I only used it to get your attention. Over the past fifteen years, I have worked with survivors of all kinds of abuse, be it sexual, physical or emotional, and the relevant point here is the patterns of reasoning they use to deal with their predicament. The first question they usually ask themselves is – Was it me? Did I do something which caused the abuse? Did I make my abuser mad or unhappy or sad enough to want to destroy who I am? As absurd as it may seem, the next question is even more shocking – is there something about me, something so useless and low, that it actually deserves abuse?

It is this seeking to blame the self that leads to something as horrific as it is fascinating – self-harm. Recent research into patterns of self-destructive coping mechanisms among Europeans show it’s not juts girls or teens, but all ages and all genders that seem to need to hurt themselves to survive. Tattooing, abusing drugs, starving or cutting ourselves. We all seem to be at it in one way or another.

Poland’s recent squabbles with both Germany and Russia – did they achieve anything apart from more ridicule? Our all-too public dislike of daily freedoms, be they religious or sexual or just in how we dress in the street – is this the best we can be? The long-term effect of such stupidity is to further convince ourselves that we are indeed useless, only capable of being laughed at, then invaded and eventually destroyed. The simple turn to the Church for respite from self-disgust. The complex to exile. Both potentially an escape from the self, and therefore further depletion of one’s own sense of self-worth.

The recent rehashing of conflict within the Polish press in the UK is just an extension of that self-destructive mechanism. The battles themselves may be just, but the overall war is as pointless as it is painful.

When I cry thinking of Poland, it is not self-pity or home-sickness or any other dubious motive. I cry, because I hurt in sympathy for a nation which has not only been made to suffer by external forces, but goes on abusing itself now that those enemies are gone. Instead of putting pens down, unclenching fists and seeking new solutions, we repeat patterns of self-harm which are not news to anyone. If we believe in Poland, let’s unite. If not, let’s work and play and live with others. Either way, let’s quit the inner-conflict before we self-harm to death.

by Marek Kazmierski

Originally published in New Time newspaper, London, 2007