How I Became “Panna”

Panna is not my real name, but the person she represents belongs to me.

She is a part of me — a part with whom I became whole.

But let’s start at the very beginning, because perhaps that is the best way to understand who I am.

My mother loved me with all her heart throughout her life. As she used to say, she loved me long before I was even conceived. She longed for me and wanted me to be hers.

The man who provided the “cell donation” for that — and who could never truly be called a father in any sense — was her first great love.

Mum was happy when she realised she was pregnant, and she gave me her body, her soul, everything she had, with joy.

At the time she was pregnant, the accepted rule was that if a woman became pregnant, the man was expected to marry her. So the parents announced that the time had come for them to marry.

Mum could hardly have been happier. She loved my “father”, and she had me — her everything.

Unfortunately, the feeling was not mutual.

Toward the end of the pregnancy Mum had to spend time in hospital. When she was finally allowed home with me for Christmas, an appalling mess was waiting for us.

I remember nothing from those first years.

My earliest memories?

I was the one sent downstairs to the tobacco shop to buy cigarettes.

Everyone knew my father was cheating on Mum.

I knew too.

And still he lied directly to my face.

He brought his lovers home and introduced them.

He smeared Mum’s name in front of my grandparents and told them lies about her.

He shouted at me because I hid his cigarettes — I only did it because I did not want him to die.

He shouted often.

At night I woke to the sound of his yelling.

He abused Mum with words.

He screamed at her to get out.

I stepped in, crying, and said I did not want Mum to leave.

His answer was that then both of us could get out into the night.

So we left in our pyjamas, crying and terrified.

Fortunately, friends lived a few stairwells away.

That was how my journey began.

Another memory comes from a summer when I must have been five or six.

Dad always took Mum’s money.

He spent it on women, cigarettes and alcohol — on everything except us.

I wanted an ice cream, so Mum went to take money from his wallet.

A huge argument erupted.

I crawled under my bed and watched in terror as Dad slammed Mum against the wall so violently that one of her fingers was nearly torn off.

I ran to her screaming hysterically.

There was blood everywhere.

I fainted.

I woke up at my cousin’s home.

Everyone denied everything.

Another evening we were returning home from friends who lived only a few blocks away.

We had gone by car.

It had been a nice family evening.

Then hell began.

I got out of the car and ran toward the entrance.

Mum got out too, but Dad — Péter — stayed in the car.

“Aren’t you coming?” Mum asked, stepping back with her hand on the door handle.

Péter pressed the accelerator and sped away, dragging Mum beside the car over the uneven road.

I have never been so terrified in my life.

I thought he had killed her.

I stood alone in the street at night sobbing.

It felt like an eternity.

Strangers came over and asked what had happened, but all I could say was:

“Dad killed my mummy.”

Then suddenly Mum appeared.

She looked battered and exhausted, terrified and happy at the same time because she could see me.

I do not know exactly when she became frightened enough to finally decide that she would never tolerate it again.

She was afraid for me.

She packed one suitcase of clothes for me and one for herself.

And we left Transylvania.

Years later, when I was ten or eleven, we were visiting relatives.

Mum always took me back so I could see them.

I was playing outside with my cousins.

They lived only a few blocks from our old apartment.

The apartment Mum had bought around the time I was born.

The apartment where we had been forced to leave so much behind.

The apartment in which the man lived who would happily have let me starve rather than pay child support.

I rang the bell.

I had not seen him for five years.

I was curious what he would say.

Would he apologise?

When I asked him why he had done everything he had done, he denied it.

Mum had “accidentally” fallen against the wall.

He “hadn’t noticed” that the car was dragging her behind it.

A liar.

I did not contact him for years after that.

When we moved to Hungary, leaving everything behind, I was frightened but I also felt free.

I missed the father I had never really had, and I began to believe I would never have one.

Mum protected me.

She worked incredibly hard for my happiness and for our survival.

I remember periods when we had very little.

We moved several times.

Three classes, three different schools.

Then Mum met the man who later became my stepfather.

I was nine.

Mum was exhausted from being alone, and I longed for a father.

He courted her.

He spoiled us.

So I grew to love him.

But this man abused that trust in the most despicable way.

He told me he would show me how I could love him even more.

He would show me how to do it.

He would show me how much he loved me.

Fathers and daughters, he said, can show their love in ways other than hugging.

There was no need to tell anyone.

It was completely natural.

Adults could be trusted.

Adults looked after children.

It continued for five years.

Sexual contact.

Not physical force — manipulative persuasion.

Why would I have assumed it was wrong?

I had never had a father who could show me what a normal father–daughter relationship looked like.

Something inside me still whispered that something was wrong.

But I did not know what.

I waited for a Prince to arrive and rescue me.

But rescue me from what?

When I was fourteen, my little sibling was born.

I adored the baby.

I had waited years for a younger sibling.

Before the birth, my stepfather sat down with me.

He said I was becoming a big girl now, and the baby would soon be here.

It was time for the baby to receive the love.

Looking back, I think I had started puberty and was becoming “too old” for his taste.

A few days after I turned seventeen, he moved out.

He left us.

Mum had become increasingly suspicious.

Poor Mum had sensed for years that something was wrong.

She had even taken me to professionals, but they had practically “laughed in her face”.

Nobody told her what my behaviour might indicate.

I had never told anyone.

My brain buried it to protect my soul.

I did not really have friends.

I knew friendship required honesty.

And although I did not consciously know what I was hiding, that secret somehow prevented me from building real friendships.

A few years passed.

Then my first “love” arrived.

I had liked the boy for about a year.

We belonged to the same social circle, drank together, but he had a girlfriend.

Then they broke up and finally I had my chance.

I was nearly eighteen.

For a year, we were basically friends with benefits.

We drank, and if we felt like it, we slept together.

Eventually I felt it was time to move on.

I liked him and he liked me, but he did not respect me.

He reminded me of my father:

cigarettes, alcohol, women.

Then came single life.

School.

Work.

Graduation.

A boy appeared who was kind to me, but we did not have sex.

He was four years older than me and still a virgin.

We had been together for eight months and I did not miss sex at all.

Then the day came.

He was decent, a little awkward, but a man.

After that he became obsessed with sex and soon stopped even asking how I was.

A month later, we broke up.

Then came another boy:

Dávid.

The “demigod”.

I was nineteen.

He was twenty-three.

We had met two summers earlier and exchanged one kiss, then drifted apart.

We ran into each other again at a party.

He had the energy of a sexual troublemaker and a little boy at the same time.

We became close.

For a year it was parties, alcohol and occasional sex.

By then, my relationship with Mum had become very difficult.

In truth, it had been deteriorating throughout my teenage years.

I knew she loved me, and I loved her.

But we argued constantly.

For that entire year Dávid kept asking me to move in with him.

Despite having many friends, he was lonely and he adored me.

Apparently I had left a permanent mark on him when, after that first kiss, I rejected him.

He was not used to hearing no.

The constant conflict with Mum wore me down.

One month before my twentieth birthday, I moved in with him.

Two weeks later, during a freezing December, I fell and suffered a concussion.

I do not even remember the fall.

At the time, I had a close friend whom I had known for months.

I had been with him on the evening of the accident.

In the early hours I became conscious again at his place, trembling.

I asked to go home.

Home was only ten minutes away, but I could not have managed alone.

So he called my boyfriend, who had to take me home in a taxi.

The headache did not disappear the next day.

The following day I finally dragged myself to hospital.

From that point, I remember almost nothing of the following weeks.

By January I was doing better — but not well enough.

I could not retain new information.

More examinations followed.

Apart from stress reactions, nothing else appeared.

I was told to rest for weeks.

School and work both stopped.

I recovered at home.

I barely went outside because noise made my head hurt.

Then February arrived.

The month that changed everything.

One quiet evening at home, one of the greatest fractures in my life took place.

I felt safe.

I felt calm.

And my brain decided it was finally time to show me what it had been hiding.

To reveal the source of that strange inner feeling that something had always been wrong.

What was wrong?

Those five years played back inside me.

Every touch meant for a woman.

By then, I understood what those touches were.

But as a child, I had believed they were a father’s touch.

Everything collapsed.

What I had believed was good turned out to be wrong.

How would I ever know the difference again if I had been mistaken so completely?

From the beginning I had known that Dávid used drugs at parties.

Cannabis was one thing, but he tried practically everything.

Part of me even liked that he dared to live dangerously.

Until then, I had never used anything except cannabis.

But at that point I was in such a dark place that I saw only one way to escape:

drugs.

I deliberately used only one substance.

Dávid looked after me and I also tried to be careful.

I still ate.

I still slept.

Strangely enough, it helped me through part of that period.

At weekends, at home, I could switch off the unbearable emotional spiral for a while.

But one thing changed profoundly.

I was living inside trauma.

Literally nobody except Dávid could touch me.

If a man or woman touched me, I went into shock.

Months later, my memory functioned better and I returned to work.

Emotionally, however, I was obviously nowhere near recovered.

In August, Dávid said enough was enough.

Together, we stopped taking drugs.

He was worried about me.

Perhaps with reason.

Maybe I had begun going too far, even though I still ate and slept while using.

But under the weight of the trauma, I had lost several kilos.

We gave up the drugs without much difficulty.

He kept alcohol, cigarettes and cannabis.

I gave up cigarettes too, even though I had smoked on and off since I was seventeen.

We threw ourselves into work.

For me it was also a form of distraction.

The combination of illness and trauma bonded us very closely.

I knew he also carried deep secrets, but he could never reveal them.

Gradually the relationship deteriorated.

I knew he loved me, but he was self-destructive.

I did not leave because I was not ready to be alone.

He felt like the only stable point in my world.

Money kept slipping through his hands.

I worked hard — eventually at two jobs — but I could not repair our life.

We spent three and a half years together.

Then it ended suddenly.

Six months earlier he had proposed.

We did not actually plan to marry, but I accepted the proposal as a sign that we were going to work on the relationship.

When we separated, I cried for two days.

On the third morning, still in tears, I got out of bed and made myself a promise:

Whatever he says, I will be strong.

I will not take him back.

He left me 100,000 forints in debt, so we remained in contact for a while.

He made promises.

He flattered me.

My financial situation was terrible and I could not see a way out.

An idea had been growing inside me for a long time.

Now it broke free — just as my sexuality broke free after the separation.

Everything I had abandoned during the relationship came back into my life:

photography, sport, dating.

I threw myself into all of it.

But the trauma was still alive.

I did not dare go to anyone’s home.

I did not feel safe.

So I found another environment in which to explore my sexuality — and combined it with solving my financial problems.

That was how Panna was born.

The young woman full of love and sexuality who, conveniently, also wanted short-term connections.

I became an escort.

And under the attention of men, I blossomed.

Within one month, I caught up financially.

And I loved the feeling that men competed for me and even paid for my time.

I was an attentive partner.

Although many arrived because of physical desire, most of them ended up simply pouring out their hearts.

Then came a devastating blow.

A phone call three months after the breakup.

During those three months, Dávid had contacted me countless times.

He promised money.

But above all, he wanted me back.

I kept saying no.

Exactly three months after our breakup, he died by suicide.

For a long time, questions raced through my mind.

Most of all, I had to keep convincing myself that it was not my fault.

If I had taken him back, perhaps he would not have done it.

But by then I knew something else too:

I could not sacrifice myself for another person.

However grateful I had been for the help he gave me at the beginning of processing my trauma, the relationship later began slowly killing me.

I knew I could not go back into something like that.

Not emotionally.

Not financially.

It is true that I often felt very alone.

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But I knew I had to learn to find happiness by myself before allowing someone else to contribute to it.

I continued on my path, and escort work remained part of it for a while.

After my earlier trauma, there was something reassuring about knowing that the booked hour would end.

Both people understood from the beginning that the situation was temporary.

And I was not actually alone, because my girlfriend was always in the room next door.

It may sound strange, but the structure, sensuality and the trust men placed in me strengthened me.

Not long afterwards, when I met a wonderful man, I left that life as easily as I had once left drugs behind.

Alongside dancing, I turned toward martial arts.

And after so many years, I finally regained a sense of unity with myself and with my body.

(The cover image is only an illustration.)

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