The Europe Challenge

I tried to fit these events into a genuine literary text, but nothing interesting came of it. So I have to tell everything as it is. Consider my story a confession. 

Rain was pounding outside; the hurricane with a strange female name had been shaking the leaves off the trees for a second day. Lately, I have been trying to avoid talking to her. I must have slept a bit because when I opened my eyes, I saw it was a quarter to nine. Somewhere at the end of the corridor, the bathroom door slammed, which meant my daughter was awake. My heart sank unpleasantly. Pulling the blanket over my ears, I closed my eyes again. I neither wanted to sleep nor to get up. There was nothing I wanted. All my desires had vanished. It seemed that my expiration date had passed, and my batteries were completely dead. 

Most of us are used to relying on ourselves; it is much calmer and far more reliable this way. But the world doesn’t care. It moves on, seemingly unaware when it knocks us off our feet. We fall into an abyss, and the world continues. The hardest thing to understand is that these inexplicable movements can save us when we least expect it. That day had changed my life, and it happened in an ordinary city library. 

Six months ago, I brought my family to the United Kingdom. A remarkable country that attracts thousands of tourists, but we were not tourists. We were refugees, which is perhaps the worst thing that can happen to a person. War is a constant guest in this world, and you live unaware until a bomb hits the house nearby and most of your neighbours are gone. Drones, rockets, mines – all these things are terrifying, but not the worst. People are the scariest thing. I imagined soldiers entering our apartment and became very scared. I have a teenage daughter and three cats. Who would save them but me? 

I decided to leave as soon as possible, but my daughter categorically refused. A teenager’s world is so small: studies, friends, familiar surroundings. I had to force her; the risks seemed too serious. We set out on the road, heading for the UK, where I had booked a free place for us to stay.  

When we arrived, I finally reached my own personal hell. My daughter was suffering. She didn’t want to meet peers or go to college. I tried to come up with ways to entertain her, but it didn’t work out well. Our relationship was falling apart, and any communication ended in tears. Additionally, one of our cats became sick and seemed to be dying, which upset her even more. 

They say major upheavals make us stronger, or conversely, turn us into helpless children. I was stuck somewhere in between. Job hunting and domestic problems didn’t let me relax; I had to put on a confident facade. Three or four months passed, and then I found a lump in my breast. The doctor asked me to come to the clinic for a biopsy. My usual calm life was crumbling at its foundations. I wasn’t afraid of death; I was afraid of leaving them alone. I didn’t tell my daughter. She had enough problems. 

’Mom!’ someone knocked on the door. I peeked out from my bedroom hiding place.
 

‘Some man has come, asking something about gas,’ my daughter said. 

‘Alright, I’ll handle it,’ I replied, getting up from the bed. 

Repair work was starting near our English house, and we had kindly been warned about it. It would be noisy until the evening. I seized this excuse and persuaded my daughter to go to the city centre. 

We found the right bus and set off. I had forgotten my phone at home, and my daughter’s phone occasionally lost its internet connection; Google Maps didn’t work, and we soon got lost. 

‘Hey, look, what’s that?’ my daughter stopped, trying to check the direction. Across the street, I saw a large glass building. It stood out from most others with its size and modernity. 

‘Let’s go closer and take a look,’ I glanced both ways, still unused to driving on the left. The building turned out to be a city centre library. It looked modern and quite large. We went inside. Almost immediately, a smiling woman approached us. She realised it was our first time there and wanted to help. My daughter was a bit confused, but she still followed her. The librarian suggested we register and showed us some interesting new books. My daughter didn’t usually read much and had last been to a library on a school trip in elementary school. I was very surprised when she decided to register and chose two books for herself. 

At home, my daughter realised that the books she had chosen didn’t interest her, and needed to be returned. The next morning, she went to the library again. Buses near us didn’t run often, so she walked more than an hour each way. The same librarian met her at the library and helped again. Enchanted, my daughter chose something new, even though she hadn’t planned to. The new books turned out to be interesting; she read them quickly and took the now familiar route to the city centre. Gradually, she got used to the area and began going to the centre almost every day. She would buy herself an ice cream and go to the park to read, sitting on a bench. Interestingly, the weather that summer was not typically English; the sun shone almost every day. 

About a month later, my girl brightened up. She met two boys her age in the library. They showed her the college they attended, and she decided she wanted to become a student. 

I don’t know – maybe there are exceptions – but it seems to me that happy children are the most important thing for a mother. Watching my daughter, I calmed myself down. Our cat recovered, I underwent an examination, and the doctor said he was almost sure the results would be good. That is what this story is about. I don’t know if the reader has felt what I felt. Maybe not. But when you put your emotions on paper, they seem to diminish immediately. Believe me, the library saved me.  

Dedicated to Wigan City Library. 

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About the Author

Svitlana Rykychynska (b. 1974) is one of six winners of the How a Library Changed My Life writing competition, run in 2024 by the European Cultural Foundation. Born in Ukraine, Svitlana graduated from a medical university, then worked as an ophthalmologist. Forced to flee the war in Ukraine, she moved to the UK with her daughter. There, she has fulfilled a long-held dream of writing books, drawing inspiration from her experiences, and from her hopes for a better future for her home country.