I am Ema. And I grew up believing that my mother died giving birth to me. Nothing more. It hurts not knowing who she really was rather than not having her around. Could that be the reason for not finding peace or enjoying happiness in my restless life? I have never known that but one thing I know now: I need to discover the truth about her and actually about my true-self.

Searching for Myself

By Emma Condurache

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2012 Emma Condurache
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-5041-1

Chapter One

I am Ema O'Neill, a totally untypical name for a Romanian. I am 35, not married and no kids. I had never been sure I was ready to engage in a marriage relationship with the whole package: husband, children and in-laws. Something was missing but at that time I was not able to put my finger on a certain issue.

I was born in Romania before 1989, the year of the Revolution, as many call it. I have never met my mother; I have been told she died when I was born and this put a lot of serious questions and raised question marks on my existence. I often wondered "why me?" is alive and which is the lesson I should learn from this. Who was my mother and how she looked like were questions I fell asleep with and tears wetting my pillow. I was, in a way or another, looking for her in every older woman I met along the way: my nannies, my teachers, the women from my family and the ones I met along the way. None of them gave me a satisfactory image of a motherly figure. I unconsciously loved her and wanted, for many times, to turn back time and be again at the stage I was inside her and most probably happy. I wanted to be unborn and stay inside her forever.

I tried to understand why I was not willing to build a home of my own and I started to investigate the idea of not living the same "story" my mother lived. I was scared to meet a man and fall in love with and have a child and die at our baby's birth.

So I occupied all my time with ... work. I looked for and got a dynamic job and kept learning and growing in a career till I got to the point of understanding that ... this was not enough. All my life was concentrated around work but this was not enough to make me feel complete. That was the moment I started to seriously question my present and my past. When putting together all the information about my roots, I was surprised to find out how little I knew. The only ancestors I knew were coming from my father's side: my father's parents. Nothing about my mothers'. I was told my mother died at my birth, but what about my mothers' parents? "She grew up in an orphanage", my father used to tell me until I was 14. However I started to get suspicious when the subject was always changed when talking about my mother. "You will understand later", was the answer typical received when asking about her. After a while I stopped asking ...

When Revolution started I was already 14 and getting ready for the winter holidays. I still remember I was baking cookies with two of my cousins. I was so scared about the idea of change to such an extent that I forgot the cookies in the oven till they got burnt. I still remember that I felt like in a dream and had no idea if I could do something about it or not. The images on TV were so shocking and continuously interrupted that I gave up watching. My cousins were loudly crying about the "terrorists" coming, even though none of us really knew the meaning of this word. I had no idea if my father was safe and sound (he was at work) or if I would ever see him again. Only thinking about losing him too made me freeze. I felt like I was alone in the world: me, a lost child, with no one around (my father's parents were not living in the same city with us) and the rest of the world. I realized then that you never have total control on your life and all the literature I read was just ... literature. My nightmare was short-lived and seemed to finish once my father got home that day. Somehow that was only the beginning of my real life because it seemed that all I have lived till that moment was nothing but a lie.

I spent the last days of 1989 packing the most important things of my life: the book "Le petit prince", the only thing left from my mother; her handwriting was nearly seen on the first page as my touch on that page was the only physical connection with her; some postcards from my holidays, a couple of black and white photos with my colleagues, teachers and my best two friends, the pioneers' scarf with all my colleagues' signature on it. My first 14 years of life had to "fit in" a small suitcase. We were supposed to leave for the States in less than 48 hours. I did not understand why all this rush and especially the fact that I was asked not to mention anything to any of my friends. Those days were the last ones when I saw my grandfather. Since my grandmother had passed away two years before, he was the only one I could say goodbye to. He seemed to know exactly what was going on as he burst into tears when we said "Good bye". I always thought he knew much more than I was told and expected not to see me again! He was right; he passed away six months later. The "goodbye" image was the last souvenir from him I carry with me.

In my first hours after I left behind the "iron curtain", I was looking at the people I was meeting in my new life: passengers from different flights waiting to board, people at the customs, people waiting in the airports' waiting halls, people behind the windows waiving "good byes". They seemed so different than I expected. Some seemed sad, some tired, some angry, some indifferent, some happy, some anxious. I was expecting to see only smiley faces on the other side of "the curtain" but they seemed to be as "normal" as we were. We were so limited in our choices as the regime imposed a limitation on the information available but also by the limitation of information we had; all these people I was looking at had something very precious we did not had before 1989: the freedom. I was completely surprised to find that all this freedom was not visible imprinted on their faces as I was expected. They seemed as "normal" as we looked like. I was wondering though what their story was, if they had dreams and plans. I was trying to think about my life and could not figure out how it was going to be. I knew that my life was turning on a different direction but I had no idea in which way. The freedom of moving was the only clear thing for me at that point. Knowing that I will be able to travel from a part of the world to the other, gave me new hopes and wings. What I found frustrating was that, at this point, I could not say a word in creating my own life. The decision for the new direction was taken by my father and I had not even been asked about it. He was writing my life and I had no input to it. Just like a pilot that does not ask if you agree to take left, right or just go straight ahead when you are in his plane. I promised myself to take all the strings of my life in my own hands as soon as I could. I was 14 then and so, I had to wait until I was 21 if American law was applied in my case.

After more than 24 hours "in the air" and our transfer stop in Paris, the very first days of 1990 found both me and my father in the States. We finally arrived at our new house. I still remember my head felt like burning. I was told to ask no questions so that the first day was a real nightmare to me. The silence felt so heavy that I was gladly ready to change it with any painful fight. My father's eyes were darker and darker and just looking at him made me more and more weary. I felt all the tension around like a powerful cloud landing on my head and I knew that this trip and those moments would totally change my life. I had no idea how much. I had a past of 14 years in an ex-communist country, and now I had to face a new world. Overnight I got the new name, a new passport, a new life. No grandparents, no friends and no idea where I was heading to. Talking to my father in those moments seemed to be the worst...