I met reverend Levente
Horváth [51 years old, dark hair, slim]
on short notice on a Saturday, right before the end of my stay in
Transylvania, through a friend of a friend who gave me his information quite
hush-hush as if we were during prohibition times and he was sending me to a secret
speakeasy. The speakeasy was in a lovely modern house on a steep street of a
beautiful hill in Cluj/Kolozsvár. We talked at length, the reverend kindly
putting his work aside.
His dear wife fed us crêpe suzettes with cherry
jam filling.
Levente Horváth: I’m Levente
Horváth. I’m a graduate in theology. I’ve been
a Protestant Church pastor for 26 years. In 1993, I returned from a one-year
study trip to Edinburgh. I was very interested in what they were doing in the
West. How the church could be helpful with the drug problems coming to Romania since
the fall of communism in 1989. We were not prepared for this. I knew that
alcohol had devastated the population under communism. We were not doing much
for that problem either... The mental hospitals were only relying on medication.
There was no psychotherapy. In the West treatments using only medication were
obsolete.
Alcoholics or addicts, who came
to us, described their rehab experience, “I was admitted for two weeks into a locked
psychiatric ward. I got scared. I was given medication, but no one spoke to us.”
There was no individual or group therapy available.
In Edinburgh I spent a year visiting
rehabilitation centers. I observed how they were working with drug addicts and
alcoholics. On my way home I had a vision that something similar should be started
in Romania. If the church showed interest, I’d be able help with the training. I’d
write up a theoretical background, and someone with more experience would have
to do the ground work, not me.
I'll tell you a funny story.
It’s about God's sense of humor. It happened in 1979, when I was eleven. My
father had a friend in Hungary, who came to Romania to stay with us for a week in Kolozsvár.
We called him uncle Jóska. József Siklós was
his name. He was a Protestant minister very experienced in helping alcoholics.
He moved to Hungary before the communism take over in 1947. He was the head of
the Blue Cross Mission for recovering alcoholics. He ran it together with a
doctor friend. The Mission was disbanded by the communism government, but
during the Kádár regime with the soft communism of the ‘70s, ‘80s, the restrictions
of the dictatorship were slightly relaxed. President Kádár felt guilty for the
blood bath of the 1956 revolution which was ruthlessly crushed by the Russians.
Comrade Kádár was boasting about the flexibility of his regime and how Hungary
flourished under his presidency. Though in reality it was just a shop-window
masking a concentration camp.
So in the late ‘70s, the
government realized that they couldn’t deal with the overwhelming problems of alcoholism.
The bishops of different denominations were summoned, and ordered, “The Church
has a long history in dealing with drunks, so get busy with them.”
Meanwhile Uncle Jóska had been exiled to a tiny, remote, falling
apart village. His Bishop, who was quite a collaborator with the communist
state, was angry with uncle Jóska because he
constantly refused to obey orders.
When the government told the Bishop,
that something had to be done about the country’s alcohol problem. The Bishop
suddenly realized that the only priest in his church
who could effectively do the job was uncle Jóska.
With great reluctance he had to bite the bullet and recalled uncle Jóska back to Budapest. Thus in 1979 the Drunkards’ Salvation
Rescue Mission/Református Iszákosmentő Misszió
began.
Though he started under modest circumstances, the results were striking.
One afternoon, during the week he was staying us, my father and him sat down
and talked. I listened to his stories. My eleven-year-old mind was astonished.
I went from one wonderment to another, that it was possible to help totally
lost alcoholics who had been given up by everyone. That there could still be a
chance for them.
I already knew that I was going
to attend seminary. I wanted to be a spiritual shepherd like my father who was
also a priest. When I went to bed that night, before falling asleep I said, “Lord,
You know that I'm dedicating my life to You, wherever You send me, whatever
service you ask of me I will do.”
That night I dreamed of the
miracles uncle Jóska was working. Alas, it turned
into a nightmare. I woke up screaming in terror, running away from dozens of horrid
alcoholics who were chasing me in a drunken rage.
I prayed anew in a cold sweat,
“Lord, I do hope that I won’t have to deal with alcoholics, because it’s beyond
my ability.”
Well, the joke is, that I came
home from Edinburgh preoccupied that alcoholics needed help, but I imagined
that somebody else would be helping them, because I certainly wasn’t capable of
doing it. I already told God so!
A few days later, my Bishop
summons me. I thought, “He wants to know how my study trip went,” so I was
preparing to tell him how we should educate the population about alcoholism,
how the church could offer this service.
Well, I enter the Bishop’s
office, he doesn’t even let me get a word in... He says, “Listen, I'm glad you’re
back. I have an idea for you. You’re going to start a rescue mission for neglected
drug users and alcoholics.”
I thought I’d fall off my
chair. All I could stammer out was, “In Edinburgh, I saw how they do this in
Scotland...” In my bafflement I said, “Give me a week to think it over!” and I went
home. I said to my wife, “Look at God’s humor... I’m not capable of doing this
work! I’ve told God this, and the Bishop wants me to start a rehab!”
Well, after much prayer, a week
of anguish, agony, rumination, fretting, I finally
said, yes. [Laughing] This is how I
became a rescuer of drunks...
My wife and I talked about what
we could adapt from Scotland’s example for our work in Romania. We started
under terrible circumstances. At first we had no rehab center. In the early
‘90s, it wasn’t possible to rent a place where an alcoholic could be locked up
for two weeks. We lived in a small house. We decided to lock ourselves in our
own home with the alcoholics. We put ourselves at risk. I found out later that
in the West the patients in the rehab don’t even know where the workers live!
Much less having them in their own homes!
We worked with lots of young enthusiastic
volunteers. We made a lot of mistakes. Once a young man dragged in a woman who
was dead drunk! “Here she is! I’ve just picked her up from the Main Square,
soaked in her own urine. Get busy with her.” My wife took her, bathed her, put
her in our own bed. We slept on a mattress on the floor. When the lady woke up in
the morning she didn’t even know where she was!
One night when I wasn’t home a
drunk who knew where we lived went around the house and smashed all our
windows. We have five kids. My wife was very altruistic.
The problem was the Helper’s Syndrome
got hold of us.
The Early Heroic Stage.
I remember a painter who was in
the throes of withdrawal, he couldn’t sleep all night and I paced with him in
the room below. He smoked one cigarette after the other. He saw a door and ran
towards it. It was my kids’ room. I had to restrain him from bursting in... He
didn’t know where he was... He would address me with different names, Ferenc, Bence,
Tamás, Bálint, Attila, Márton, Csaba, Sándor, you name it. For ten days he
stayed with us, struggling.
Eventually it became clear that
patients needed their own space, some center, that was not a mental
institution, where they wouldn’t be locked up in a degrading manner, or fear being
attacked by violent patients.
We started to search. In the
end, in Ózd/Ozd, near Marosludas/Luduş, 19 kilometers away, we found an old
mansion. The mansion with 21 acres of land, granary, barns,
stables, the state leased it to us for 99 years.
Half the roof was missing but
we quickly covered it with a new roof. It was a beautiful, 500-year-old French
Renaissance chateau with four wonderful svelte towers. It would have been a
shame for it to fall to pieces. We got it, we roofed it, but we decided, “Well,
to renovate it would be too expensive. Let’s renovate the barn and turn it into
a therapeutic home.”
After the ’89 revolution there
was a new law that said nationalized property could be reclaimed by its
previous owner. The Baroness who owned the mansion lived in France. I sent a
video of the reroofed mansion and the renovated barn. I told the Baroness over the
phone, “The mansion is yours, Madam. We leased it for 99 years from the state,
but you now have the right to claim it. We are prepared to give it up, though
we have invested a lot in repairs. This is how it looks like now, but if you
want, we could claim it from the state in your name. The decision is yours.”
She watched the video, called me back, and said, “You’ve done a wonderful job. Were
you not to repair the mansion, it would have collapsed in a few years. You know
what? I’ll donate it to you for one symbolic franc.”
This miracle happened. [Laughs.]
E.V.:
Can
you tell me some stories about your patients?
H.L.: Every three years we have an alumni reunion.
For a weekend they come back to their Ózd home. These occasions are very
uplifting. They share what they’ve gone through since they left. It’s very
interesting to hear them.
There was a journalist who worked
for a newspaper in Bucharest. Because of his drinking his boss told him, “I
could fire you immediately, but I’ll give you one more chance. Go to the Ózd rehabilitation center.” He’d heard about us. The
journalist came, stayed for treatment, got out, went back to work. Now, he is
the managing editor; his career took off. In six years he’s never relapsed. For
the first time in his life he began to furnish his apartment, because until the
age of 30, all he wanted to do was drink himself to death. He was a poet, but
full of self-doubt, he fell into making a living as a journalist. He said, “Life
is meaningless. My only goal is to drink until I perish.” It was a form of
suicide. But here he realized, "I’m responsible for my life. It is a
gift." His inner split disappeared. He returned to the living.
Another story. In
Sepsiszentgyörgy/Sfântu Gheorghe there was an alcoholic man who worked
as a paramedic. He constantly saw alcoholics reaching their last stages, but he
kept drinking. Paramedics see a lot of things. They’re surrounded by death.
Slowly he became estranged from his wife. His children were afraid of him
because when he was drunk he’d go into black outs and become violent. When he
came to, his wife and kids told him how destructively he had behaved. He
wouldn’t believe it. He got angrier thinking they were slandering him.
After this man was in our rehab
for a week, he heard that his wife was filing for divorce. Thoroughly in shock he
wanted to rush back home. After a long struggle the team workers convinced him
to stay, because if he was going out to save his marriage, he couldn’t since he
was still a drunk. He accepted our help and understood that he had to work not
on the marriage but on himself—he’d leave that one for now.
When he left the home, he discovered
his wife was with someone else... He would have had no chance to fix his
relationship. He tried to reconnect with his children. He realized that he was
responsible for everything that had happened. He struggled for two years,
strengthening the relationship with his children, putting up with his wife’s angry
outbursts, her rules, strict boundaries, and
the other man.
Two years later seeing how much
he had changed, his wife relented, “Come back. The children and I miss you.”
E.V.: “…and
your gulyás. And paprikás. Swear: no more pálinka.”
H.L.: [Laughs]…
Perhaps. Their relationship flourished. The kids are happy, the whole family is
thriving.
E.V.: Why did
you undertake this work? Wasn’t it a stigma?
H.L.: Oh, yes. To this day I realize that I’d
be much more popular were I to be working for orphans. Everybody pities the
orphans. “The orphans deserve our donations. It’s trendy. But to those drunken swine,
villains, good for nothing scoundrels?!... To think that you stoop to talk to
them! You’re supportive of them!” Often I get such accusations. My colleagues
as well.
Once one of my co-workers asked
a businessman, “Would you like to share in the privilege of supporting our work?” “I won’t help your drunken pigs and
druggies. I gladly help with the orphans, but those drunken pigs, no!”
It was very interesting.
My colleague said, “Alright, Sir,
I understand. How old is your child?”
“One is four, the other six.”
“Good, but if your children or
grandchildren become addicts, what will you do then? What if when they are 14 or
16 years of age, they begin to use drugs? Would you still not support this
work?”
He got frightened.
Often people don’t think. They
just stigmatize. They don’t see it’s also about his own life, or his children,
or grandchildren, or a close relative. I could understand, maybe his father was
a drunk and he hated drunks all his life.
I had to come to terms that the
work we’re doing would be very unpopular. Even in our own church, they barely
understand it.
How did I get over it? By
realizing that I'm no different than the worst alcoholic.
E.V.:
How
did that happen?
H.L.:
I
believe in God, in the Bible, that all people are sinful. Even Goethe, who wasn’t
a fervent church-goer, said toward the end of his life, "There is no sin, that
I might not have committed sometime in my life." I’m capable of any
sin. Even if I haven’t committed a sin de
facto. What makes me think I’m different from a murderous robber?! Someone in
a black out that commits a terrible crime? No, I'm potentially no different or better
than anyone.
So, now when I talk to a decrepit
and malevolent alcoholic I can see what he could transform into, and I respect that
in him. Faith helps me. The Bible says all men were created in God's image and
likeness. I see the drunk as a God-faced man. No matter what mask he wears now
over the face of God, even if that mask is devilish, vicious, hideous, someday,
he’ll voluntarily take it off, saying, “I was a liar, a pig. I pushed everyone
way to get alcohol. I destroyed my family.” He’ll tear off these masks and he’ll
shine beautifully.
Then he is my teacher.
Everyone is a teacher. I don’t
teach a drunk, he teaches me. I watch and learn from how he processes my
words. Even if he is the least fortunate of people. Everyone that’s been given
up, is still my teacher in some way. It’s an exciting adventure to learn from
watching my interaction with drunks. Watching the world, watching God, our
relationship with each other. What he does, the way he relates to himself, helps
me with my self-knowledge.
Those who recover and return to
us often say, “What shocked me when I got here was the love and respect they
showed me.” Usually, they kick drunks out of the mental institutions. Doctors yell
at them, “You drunken pig! Why drink?!... Just don’t drink anymore!”
But the unfortunate alcoholic can’t
stop drinking.
That’s why he ended up here.
If I tell a diabetic, “You’re just
like me. Come on, have some sugar...” and he does, “Well, I'm not reacting badly.
Why are you?” Or if I say to someone allergic to elderflower, “Smell the flower!
I don’t have tears. Why are you crying and sneezing?” Or I tell a lung patient,
“You’re coughing too much! We have company. Stop it! Don’t cough!” This can’t
be done. So to say to an alcoholic, “I can stop after a glass or two. You can
too!” He can’t because he’s not me. I haven’t walked a mile in his moccasins.
He isn’t able to stop.
His will is a prisoner.
I don’t know if this answered
your question...
E.V.:
Yes,
you did. Yesterday at the university I gave a lecture on how to address social
issues through art. Afterwards a professor asked me why I was attracted to such
taxing topics. You see, Reverend, alcoholism is not the only utterly depressing
subject that I work on. After I started this research I went on a tangent, and
started researching the discrimination against Gypsy people.
H.L.:
Oh,
how great!
E.V.: It’s
not great at all!
H.L.:
I
respect you very much for this. Few people are willing to deal with these
matters.
E.V.: The professor asked me kindly. She
didn’t attack me, why I wouldn’t rather deal with orphans. I began to gather people’s
stories about alcoholism in 2008, primarily because I grew up in the midst of
it. I saw what was happening to my family. My father was never sober, my
younger brother died because of drinking. I couldn’t go home to attend his
funeral. I was waiting for my greencard to come through. So I wrote several
short plays about my family. But when I finally was able to travel, and I went
to his tomb, as I entered the cemetery and looked around, there were so many
young men dead under the slabs of marble, as if we’ve been through a war! As I
walked through my hometown at dusk drunks were staggering about. It was not
just my brother and father. So I wanted to write a full-length play, or a book,
including other people’s experiences, enlarging the circle, learning more about
alcoholism, not just from my own perspective. I interviewed about fifty people,
recovering alcoholics, mourning mothers, doctors, policemen, scientists…
Well, it’s now 2011, and I’m just
now finishing the interviews. Sometimes I feel I’ll succumb, crushed by the
mountain of material I’ve gathered, like an ant trying to carry a Ioaf of
bread. It’s so tormenting.
I collected interviews from
people to share their stories with the world. These people trusted me, talked
to me, encouraged me, respected me. I thought that this process would work
wonders for me, heal me. At times it does, when certain questions I had get answered
in an interview, but most of the time people talk about how terrible alcoholism
is.
Their sorrow nested in me. It
burdens me.
I want to do something good
with all this suffering. Friends, like the university professor, ask with good
intentions, because they see me suffering. “You live in New York City, for
God’s sake. Why can’t you interview American movie stars? A lot of them are
drunks and drug addicts! Why not?! Why not?! Interview accomplished people.
What’s wrong with you?! You used to be joyful?! Why don’t you write a comedy?!”
Which is ironic, since I found
in this miserable topic a lot of humor.
Last week we had a staged reading
of some of my short plays. A high school friend showed up. She’s a serious
woman, she works in IT. She works hard to pay her son’s college tuition. She doesn’t
know anything about Gypsy issues, or drunks. Why would she? She came because
she was fond of me, though I warned her my plays were about stigmatized issues.
After the show she encouraged her friends to come telling them, “I felt so very
relaxed and energized after Ella’s show...” We talked about Gypsy villages
burning and alcoholics dying like flies, and she felt relaxed! Isn’t that interesting?!
H.L.:
These
topics are not easy for people to accept. Even at first sight, conflicting
feelings can arise. I always looked at Gypsy as my equals... I guess I suckled it
with my mother's milk.
This memory flashes by: my
mother was a teacher in Bonyhád. Her father was a minister there. Many of my mother’s
pupils were Gypsy children. My mother visited all her pupils and so she went into
the Gypsy quarter too. Well, the whole village was gossiping and putting her
down, “The priest's daughter goes to the dirty Gypsies! How can she do such a
thing?!”
My mother always ended her
stories saying, “My son, all people are equal! Romanian, Hungarian, Gypsy!”
It’s been a struggle for our
children to accept this. Children are very cruel to each other. They’d come
back from the playground or school and we’d always have to dismantle their ethnic
stereotypes. Fortunately, they grew up to be tolerant.
I was proud of my mom. She was
defying the whole village as they stigmatized her because she cared about the Gypsies.
This was a valuable lesson for me. My father always tried to help disadvantaged
people. Even in his old age with help from his friends in the West got a
wheelchair for a disabled young man, at a time when no one had access to
wheelchairs in Romania. For a young girl a hearing aid.
He was always sensitive to
social disparity.
This is a great legacy for me.
However, it’s important to know
when you’re working in a social assistance field, you’re always risking
burnout. After a while dealing with people’s problems can become extremely
overwhelming, weighing, stressing you out. If we don’t take proper care of
ourselves, in the end we can lose our love for life, end up seeing the world much
too dark.
This goes with the territory.
Now, you asked me how I have the
strength for humor and why my work is not overwhelming. I always share the
burden with God. I feel it’s not my job to save the world. There’s a charming Hassidic Jewish story: A young man goes to
the rabbi and says, “Rabbi, I can’t believe in God, since I’ve accepted the ideals
of the Enlightenment. Rabbi, there’s no God! I have to tell you, I’m not coming
to temple anymore. This is it.” The rabbi listens to him... “I see, I see, my
son... I feel great respect for you. You have a huge job to do and you’ve taken
a very big responsibility upon yourself. Since for you there is no God, if a
poor man, or a wretched cripple, or anyone suffering in their hour of need
turns to you, you can’t entrust them to God to help them. You alone have to alleviate
their suffering. [Laughs] A huge
thing! I deeply respect you, my son, that you're ready to take that on your
shoulders alone, and you can’t delegate anything to God. You alone must solve
the world's ills.”
I love this story. In it
flickers a light that fills me with enormous gratitude because God really
exists for me. I don’t have to save the world. I don’t have to solve
everything. The typical Helper’s Syndrome is that I have to save the other. Everyone changes when they take on that
role. It’s extremely dangerous, because often more harm is done than good. I
can let the other person be, because there’s also God, there’s also Heaven that
stretches above him too, and
Providence/Fate/Destiny as well.
I was in a position when I had
to say, “Don’t come to Ózd, don’t come to therapy because you’re not on the
floor yet. You might freeze this winter,” because he was homeless, “but you’re
not ready to come yet.” He looked at me, “You don’t want to help me?!” “That’s
why I’m saying this, to help you.” “What kind of help is that?! You’re refusing
to take me in at Ózd?!” “I’m telling you again: you have to be sure that you
don’t want to come here just because it’s warm in the shelter, but because you really
want to give up drinking. I don’t feel you’re not yet knocked out on the floor,
because you can only rise up when you’ve reached rock bottom. Now, this seems merciless
to you, not to let you come. Even more, because you could easily freeze to
death this winter and then there’ll be no one to come next year.” I had to talk
to him that way. I wholeheartedly loved this man, but that does not mean that
I’d pussyfoot with him. Quite the contrary.
Before this guy I had an
experience with a lady who was a big phony, I really enjoyed her style... Well,
addicts become great con artists. The problem isn’t the alcohol but the
falsehood that turns everything into a lie. This cripples the soul terribly,
but as the alcoholic sinks, there is no other road to take.
This lady was a genius. She cooked
up some story, “Your Reverence, I broke my eyeglasses.
Could you buy me eyeglasses? I can’t read anymore!” Very educated, very well-read
she was. Quoting magnificently from Origen and St. Augustine, and other early
Christianity theologians. She had culture wrapped around her little finger! She
knew The Scriptures, everything she knew! She was a philosophy and psychology
teacher at one point, but now a hopeless alcoholic. “Your
Reverence, I’m in sorry need of a Bible!” She knew what to say to
priests. “Could you give me a Bible and a pair of eyeglasses because mine have
broken?”
Well, I had enough sense not to
give her money, but I did buy the eyeglasses for her. She received a Bible as
well. A week later, she sold the Bible at the flea market and went drinking. She
played this game with churches of every Christian denomination. You see, one can
always push the buttons of devout Christians.
She was a genius at this. She perfected her scheming over many years.
In the Adventist Church they baptized
her three times, they immersed her in water. They perform adult baptism. Of
course, after a while she began to drink again. After three immersions they
stopped dipping her in the water. She was not convinced in the least by their
faith, she did it just to be able to chow down at their weekly gatherings.
When I found out about her
three immersions, I understood. With all my heart I understood. The next time I
saw her I looked into her eyes full of kindness and said, “Dear XY, I love you.
I love you so much. I haven’t met such a good-for-nothing villain like you in a
long time. Listen to me: you play such a charlatan’s
con game. You wrap every priest around your little finger... You’ve become a master
of the con artist game. I love you so much I
want to tell you my sorrow: You’re walling up your life, you can’t be yourself
anymore. You’re sinking, caught up in these compulsive games, while someone is
crying inside... Your true self, who can’t stand tall and be open anymore.”
She looked at me, tears running
down her face, “Your Reverence, no one ever
talked to me like that. You really love me. I was never loved.”
E.V.:... Won’t
you buy a Bible for me?...
H.L.: [Laughs!] Well, she knew that her trick
wouldn’t work with me.
But being homeless and out in
the street, I let her come to the rehab for two weeks in winter. She ate like a
hungry animal. She ate with her whole being. It was all about being in a warm
shelter, where there was food. She couldn’t concentrate at all. She fell asleep
in the middle of meetings. Toward the end I said to her, “You got away nicely
these two weeks. You always said, ‘I love you,’ so I owe you the truth. You’ll
never set foot in this place again, until you’re willing to give up drinking
for good.”
Her story dragged on for 11
more years. Finally, she ended up in an old folks’ home and died. She was
already old.
She was the last person I let
stay at Ózd, who I knew didn’t want to give up drinking.
Jesus is my teacher in this.
He could simultaneously say the
truth ruthlessly while showing the greatest love. This balance is the best
mental equilibrium one can aspire to.
Again, where are we, we’ve
talked about so many things. [Laughs]
E.V.: I’ve
been asking myself why I’m drawn to this material…. When I was ashamed of my father’s
drinking… My brother died drinking…
H.L.:
You
needed to work through it.
E.V.:
Maybe.
I also wanted to speak publicly about what happened within my family. There was
violence. I wrote out of anger.
H.L.:
It
doesn’t matter. It’s alright...
E.V.:
It
was great when I interviewed a man who got sober... But there was a case where a
man who when he drank tortured the entire family, his siblings, his mother.
What hurt them, hurt me. I'm not sure I’m doing all of this out of love. Maybe only
love could help me finish this work… Maybe it’s my desire for revenge that
blocks me. I’m ashamed.
Now what do you intend to do
next? Are you waiting to retire? Or you’ll continue to do this work?
H.L.:
I
hope so.
E.V.:
When
you were eleven years old you didn’t want it, but now you hope to do it until
your death? How does this change come about, that first we don’t want, and then
we surrender to it whole heartedly…
H.L.: If I can help just one person out of a
hundred that is my joy...
E.V.:
What
kind of success rate is that?!
H.L.:
A
drop in the ocean. The Talmud says, “If you save a man, it’s like you saved the
whole world!” I can’t save the whole world, but through the grace of God I can
save one or two people, here and there. Then, it’s worth it. I know it’s a very
small percentage, but it’s more than nothing. Think about it: was there
anything in history, any positive social change, that didn’t start small and seemingly
hopeless in the beginning? It’s always started that way. Elizabeth Fry's vision
to bring about prison reform began like this. Hopeless struggle that it was. A
fragile woman defied the world. Who would have believed that a hundred years
later, the change she fought for would be embraced by an ethical consensus
throughout society?
It's okay if you didn’t start
out doing this out of love. After what you’ve experienced, please know, that
this dark burden doesn’t have to be carried moaning alone, but some way out
must be found. It’s okay that you started simply from the desire to put to rest
the struggle with your feelings of, “Why is it that I have to feel ashamed?!”
of, “How do I escape this engulfing fog of acidic revulsion!”
We start instinctively at times
on the road to recovery. Maybe a heavenly love urges us, brings us towards our
own healing. Maybe I’m not doing it out of love right now. After a while, this might
turn around in me and love could appear.
Everyone is an open world, full
of surprises. My life is full of surprises. God is a God of surprises. Human
existence is made up of small surprises. One who starts to face her own wounds
and decides, “No matter what, I’m going to show my pain and anger to the world.
It's important for me to see the truth: What happened to me? What did they do
to me, those who were close? I loved them! Why do I have to be ashamed? Maybe I
don’t have to... Maybe others are rowing in
similar boats but they don’t dare talk about it. So, let’s meet. Let’s conquer
this darkness. Let us row out of this cloud of uncertainty.’
Looking into each other's eyes,
healing slowly starts.
I’m very pleased with your endeavor.
E.V.:
Thank
you. I come to Romania often, but I don’t feel at home. I suffered a lot here.
My hope is in New York City. Oddly, when I received my American citizenship in
April, I immediately planned to return, to stay three months. “Let me see if
they really need me or not. Is it important for them what I do, or am I day dreaming
that they care?” As I’ve told you I’ve presented fragments of my work to the
public. Not many came, twenty people or so.
H.L.:
There’s
still a lot of taboo around alcoholism.
E.V.:
The
philharmonic orchestra performed that night on another floor, and many people
came to hear their music... I was featured in newspapers, TV interviews, radio
talk shows, “Here, please, this is my work! If you're interested, please come. Things
need to change.” Actors read three monologues. I see that a man goes out and
then after awhile comes back. He said, “It’s so realistic. I’m surprised. I’ve
expected a chirpy feather-brained American, but you’re a seasoned writer! It’s
painful to witness the expression of human suffering.” It touched him, he made
my efforts worthwhile. That’s what I came back for.
H.L.:
That's
right. That's right.
E.V.:
I
thought there will be hundreds of people I could share my knowledge with,
but...
H.L.: It
was worth it for only one man.
E.V.:
I
don’t know how the rest of my material will arrange itself, but your words will
make a fine ending.
March 28, 2013
New York
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