BEFORE AND AFTER
ALM No.91, July 2026
ESSAYS
I.
There are words that live inside you and simply refuse to come out. Not because they don't exist — but because they are too large, too heavy, too alive to fit inside ordinary sentences. That is precisely the situation I find myself in. My entire vocabulary, my years of academic training, every book I have read and every article I have written — and still the words fall short.
Before this meeting, my life was even and predictable. Not bad — just grey. Days replaced one another with the monotony of a well-oiled machine: lectures, the department, conferences, home, lectures again. I did not know how to delight myself. I did not know what to wake up for with any sense of urgency. The word purpose sounded to me like a beautiful, abstract theory — one that belonged to other people, not to me.
II.
And then everything changed.
Life suddenly acquired colour — not metaphorically, but literally: mornings became different, the air became different, even I became different. I began to set goals and pursue them with stubborn, unrelenting determination. I write academic papers now — there are about ten of them, perhaps more; honestly, I have lost count. My personal essays have been published in rather prestigious journals. I have earned several serious professional certificates and continue to raise my qualifications. I am a professor of English literature, I am nearly forty, and I am finally running forward — not out of inertia, but because I want to.
I have become ambitious. Confident. Strong. Fearless. I laugh genuinely now — from the depths of my soul, not out of politeness. I smile and I can feel myself smiling.
III.
I am chasing a bus. I — Professor Victoria, in a blazer, in tailored trousers, in expensive sunglasses, with my head held high — am chasing a bus. I am out of breath, because I smoke too much and my lungs are no longer what they were. But I run. Because at that stop, someone is waiting for me.
I am jealous in ways I have never known before, in ways I did not know I was capable of. I stand outside the school where my son studies, and a wave of anger washes over me over something utterly trivial — a student, a glance, a word. I do not hold back. I pour it all out, loudly, in the street, and I do not care who is watching. I am Professor Victoria, and I am nearly hysterical — because I am jealous, because I love, because it is stronger than I am.
I buy theatre tickets. I show up at someone else's place of work and wait outside — just wait, so that we can walk to a cafe together afterward. I do all of this for the first time in my life, and I am not embarrassed by a single moment of it.
IV.
I am not perfect. Twice a year I sink so deep into myself that I do not surface for two weeks. I drink. Without stopping. And in those times, being near me is its own kind of hell. But someone stays. That is what astonishes me above all else: someone stays.
We are from different times. The distance between our years is not an abyss, but it is there, and I feel it. Sometimes it seems to me as though I am looking at something that existed long before I arrived and will go on existing long after. And I hold on. I hold on because every new day with this person is an adventure I never expected and cannot explain.
I know that one day everything will change. That day will come — inevitably, as all inevitable things do. And I know that I will break. That my life will be turned upside down. That I will be standing somewhere — perhaps at the very same bus stop — and I will not know what to do next.
* * *
But I will remember. Always — I will remember.
Because it is only beside this person that I became who I am now: a professor with her head held high, chasing buses, making scenes on the street, writing essays at three in the morning and failing to find the words — because the words are simply too small for what she feels.
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