The Day I Was Taken into Custody

My story began when I was twenty.

I think that was when I truly began to become the person I am.

Our mother died that year.

My younger sister was fifteen.

My older sister was twenty-three.

I had been living the free, rebellious life of a university student.

That period ended quickly.

From that point onward, everything became different.

I escaped to England for two years.

My younger sister went to France.

In short:

The family scattered.

Then one Christmas, we all happened to be home when a letter from the court found us.

It informed us that we were the legal heirs.

Which meant we also inherited our poor mother’s debts.

My older sister was earning very well at the time and was already a known public figure.

Each of us received a bill for 60,000 forints.

We did not complain.

We simply accepted it.

Because my younger sister was still studying, my older sister paid her share too.

I asked to pay mine in instalments.

The arrangement was approved:

10,000 forints per month.

My father suggested that the safest solution would be to give the money to my older sister at the beginning of each month.

I was living abroad.

Even when I returned home, it was usually only for weekends.

She had more time and could pay the bills for me.

Fine.

No problem.

More than six months passed.

During a family gathering, I suddenly had an instinctive feeling that I should ask my sister for the payment receipts.

She said she would give them to me the following week.

She never did.

And I eventually forgot.

Around a month later, on a Friday, somebody rang my doorbell.

The police.

They told me I had an unpaid court-ordered debt of 60,000 forints.

Worse, I had supposedly ignored the formal notices as well.

Because I could not produce payment receipts, they took me in.

Before they dismantled my phone, I called my sister.

I told her to bring the receipts immediately.

I did not want to stay there.

I was not a criminal.

I could not understand what was happening.

How had the payments not been made?

We waited about half an hour.

My sister did not appear.

The officers pulled my hands behind my back.

Handcuffed me.

Then took me to Gyorskocsi Street and placed me in custody.

Even today, when somebody touches my wrists, an unpleasant sensation moves through me.

I remember the cold, hard handcuffs.

And the complete confusion and desperation of standing inside a reality I did not understand.

They took me into the basement.

The situation was deeply humiliating.

They even fingerprinted me.

Everybody treated me with complete indifference.

I could feel judgement in people’s eyes.

I spent the two most terrifying days of my life in a cell containing almost nothing.

Even the toilet was outside.

I received no information.

Nobody spoke to me.

An indescribable fear took over.

Nervously, I kept twisting my medium-length hair around my finger.

I sat on a bench.

Rocking forward and backward.

Trying to place my thoughts somewhere else.

I wanted to scream like an animal.

Smash things.

Destroy something.

But I had no strength.

Fear consumed everything.

I twisted my hair so tightly that on Sunday I finally noticed a large number of strands had been pulled out and wrapped around my fingers.

The sight broke me.

I began sobbing.

That was as long as I had been able to stay strong.

I was no longer ashamed.

I no longer cared.

Until then, I had still believed that at any moment I would see my sister’s face.

That I could throw my arms around her.

That we would laugh and say it had all been a misunderstanding.

But I had been inside for more than two days.

She had not come.

I became so uncertain that I could no longer even remember clearly whether I had actually given her the money.

What if I had imagined the whole thing?

What if this was reality?

Or perhaps this was the dream and I would soon wake up.

The hair wrapped around my fingers brought me back.

No.

This was real.

Painfully real.

Nobody told me what time it was.

What day it was.

From the light entering through the window, I guessed that more than two days must have passed.

Morning seemed to arrive again.

Then I heard footsteps.

Not the usual tapping.

A voice followed.

Coming closer.

Louder.

My heart began pounding.

Sweat formed on my face.

I stepped to the bars and gripped the cold metal.

I was filled with hatred.

Pain.

A sense of being completely misunderstood.

I knew that whoever was approaching would receive all of that rage if I let it explode.

I had to calm myself.

I squeezed the bars harder.

Breathed deeply.

Slowly exhaled.

Like I had learned in yoga:

Empty the mind.

It barely worked.

The square edges of the metal dug into my palms.

I felt nothing.

There was so much anger inside me that I wanted to tear the bars apart.

Run.

Through everything.

Through everyone.

Escape.

Then I looked up.

A thin man was standing opposite me.

He looked directly into my eyes.

Said hello.

And told me they were formally booking me into custody.

I nearly fainted.

All the hatred disappeared instantly.

I collapsed beside the bars.

I could not even cry anymore.

My sight blurred.

Two guards pulled my hands behind me and put me in chains.

They took me to a small booth.

I remained there for more than four hours.

There was nothing to do except sit.

I gave up fighting.

I was broken.

Then, to my enormous surprise, one of the guards kindly asked why I was there.

Oh my God, I thought.

Did somebody just speak to me with compassion?

I could barely process it.

I began crying again.

Me.

The woman everybody believed was strong.

The woman who always had an answer.

Who never gave up.

Who never cried.

“I think it’s an unpaid fine,” I said, wiping my tears.

He left the door open.

Walked away.

After several steps, he turned halfway around and quietly told me not to worry.

He was gone a long time.

When he returned, he brought good news:

I was free.

The payment receipts had arrived.

Every bill had been paid — dated Monday morning.

I had no energy left for anger.

I did not even want to be furious.

I wanted only one thing:

To leave.

To go very far away.

I wanted to erase the entire weekend.

But I could not.

I had to keep the receipts.

And with them, the memory.

My first stop was my father.

I told him:

I was no longer his daughter.

And I never wanted to see my older sister again.

I made him the main scapegoat because it had been his idea to ask my sister for help.

Today, I know I cannot place all the blame on them.

I also carried responsibility.

But the fracture inside my life was so deep that even now, forgiveness has not fully come.

I would wish a sibling like that on nobody.

I have had no relationship with my sister since.

My father and I are slowly finding a way back toward one another.

I cannot describe the feeling of stepping through the gate and receiving my freedom again.

The sky looked bluer.

Colours seemed sharper.

At first, I did not notice the change in myself.

Other people did.

My environment.

My colleagues.

They were the first to tell me something was not right, even though I believed I had already moved past the experience.

They said only one thing:

My eyes had changed.

I stood in front of the mirror.

For the first time, I noticed they no longer sparkled the way they used to.

There was pain in them.

A broken person looked back.

Before this experience, I almost never said what I genuinely thought if I believed my words might hurt somebody else.

I hid from conflict.

Afterwards, that changed completely.

Today I speak.

---

I have to speak.

If I disagree, I say it.

If I have something important to say, I say it.

Because everything that happens to us teaches and directs us.

Ultimately, we are responsible for our own lives.

Even when that truth is difficult to recognise.

Today I have found greater balance inside myself.

Even when honesty hurts the other person, I say what I believe.

I fight for what I consider right.

I no longer want to satisfy everybody.

I am in a happy relationship.

My partner accepts the wound from my past.

Today, I accept it too.

And strangely enough, it has made me stronger and more balanced.

I have plans.

And I am now able to make them real.

I feel ready for the world.

Because the world is waiting for me too.

I live more responsibly.

But I have not yet learned how to forgive.

(The cover image is only an illustration.)

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