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[Alexandr Korol]

I may have felt something like this my whole life, but it’s as if, you know, with each cycle, each age period, you assign different significance to things — or don’t assign any at all. Even when I was 8, 10, or 12 years old, I was already kind of like an adult. I often used the film “Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life” as an example — there’s a boy in it who, when shown as a child, talks to everyone like an adult, so boldly and confidently — that’s how I was back then. It was like all the other kids were around me, but I felt like I was exactly the same as I am now — aware of everything: I could see who was thinking what, who was feeling what, who wanted what; I could see how everyone was different from one another, who came from which kind of family, who was whose continuation, what strengths and weaknesses they had, and even what awaited them. Basically, I was already sensing all of this back in school. I saw all of it, but I just didn’t assign any special meaning to it — and in fact, I assumed that probably everyone else saw things the same way. How was I supposed to know that only I saw the world like that? You see, I didn’t give it any special significance. I didn’t know that it was something unique. Now I can look back and reflect, and realize that everyone else was in the clouds — only I wasn’t asleep. And how can that be? And this feeling, that there was someone I was talking to... If I remember correctly, the first real experience of that was in 2008, in June or July — whenever graduation is. Probably in June. That was when my graduation ended, I came home, changed clothes, grabbed my things, my bag, and left the house. And that’s when I started reaching out — it was just like... Imagine, before that I didn’t even seem to have those kinds of thoughts. Well, not quite — because I had been keeping a diary since 2006, writing things like, “Why are people like this?” So it’s like I already had a sense that there was some kind of God or system or something watching over all this — I had that feeling. And when I kept those diaries, they were all addressed to God, but I didn’t imagine this God as some old man with a beard, and it wasn’t connected to Christianity. It was more that I felt like there was something or someone higher. And I would write to that “higher” being in my notebooks: “Why does this girl hurt that boy, and why does this boy hurt the girl?” — school problems. “Why did I do nothing wrong, and people still think badly of me? Why is it like that? I’m good, and everyone’s bad, but all the bad people judge me for being good. Should I become bad, or should I keep standing my ground?” That was always the question.