DallasDHom

I was born in 1980 in the USSR and lived there the first 13 years of my life. This is what it was actually like for me as a kid: •Lines for everything. Bread, eggs, milk, toilet paper, shoes, medicine, even to see a doctor. Some years we were okay. Other years there was nothing. •From about 5½ or 6 years old one of my jobs was to go stand in those lines for bread, eggs, and milk. If I stepped out for even a second I lost my spot and my family had no bread that day. Didn’t matter that I was little. •I learned not to ask for the little bit of candy on the shelf. Not because I didn’t want it. I really, really did. I just knew my parents didn’t have an extra penny. I was allowed to have one chocolate little candy a week and two caramels. They were kept in a box in a wall closet and I used to put little pieces of wood into the wrappers until I got old enough to realize I was eating my entire family candy stash 😭 •Fear and survival ran everything. My parents went a whole month without coffee or other basic things. Some months my brother and I got one egg a day and my parents went without. •That’s why I have such a special relationship with food. I swore my own kids would never go hungry the way my family did in Russia. •“Free” medicine meant the x-ray machine was broken when I broke my wrist in second grade. No painkillers for dental work. When my grandmother in her late 80s got sick they told us she was old, let her die at home. No doctor ever came. She lived 15 more years until 103 after getting a new chance in USA 🇺🇸 •When I was 10 I got mauled by a dog and spent nights in a state hospital getting rabies shots. My parents weren’t allowed inside. They could only knock on my window. When I needed to go to the bathroom I had to crawl there on my hands and knees. •No one could complain. We knew if my parents said the wrong thing, or if we kids did, we’d be sent to an orphanage and they’d go to jail. My uncle went to jail for refusing to tell on his family over something faith-based. •Our personal mail and Letters were always read by the authorities . For my mom’s birthday my aunt wrote that she put a stick of gum in the letter for us to share. Gum was a very big deal. We opened it and there was no gum. •Phones were listened to. You never knew who was listening. •The Party and the state came before family, before you, before anything. My dad was a fireman and couldn’t get promoted until he joined. They kept sending him into fires until he did. •Nothing was ever free. The people who worked the produce counters and controlled the food and goods had the real power. Everyone else just waited and got scraps. •October 28, 1993. The day I arrived in America at 13. The day my new life started. Don’t let this happen here. Vote.