One woman who looked at me a little more closely

I had a wife.
I loved her.
Just wait. I really loved her.
We had a tiny room with hardly any furniture.
We even ate dinner on the floor, because we had no table.
I was a junior researcher in a physics institute.
I was developing one of my ideas.
My wife had to work three jobs so we could make ends meet.
Long story short, I invented a new
tunnel diode.
It's...
It's hard to explain.
At work they congratulated me...
...gave me a 50-ruble bonus
and proposed I work on a new project
So I went home with the result of three years' work:
Fifty rubles.
My wife gave me a look like you'd give.
A large foreign company offered to buy my patent for a lot of money.
But I said no, I wanted it to be used here, in my country.
I offered it to various places.
They said "It's great".
But nobody needed it. Nobody.
I began to drink.
I began to drink terribly.
I lost my job, my wife left me.
I only cared about drinking.
Morning, noon, and night.
I was dead drunk from morning to night.
It was awful.


One day I sensed I would die soon.
And the thought even made me happy,
It didn't scare me at all.
All I wanted was for it to be soon.
I began to look for death, I really did, I looked for it.
I would fight with police, bother people.
I got beaten up and cut.
I slept on the street, in and out of hospitals.
I was beaten to a pulp.
But I'd pull through and crawl back out.
At home I'd lick my wounds like a stray dog and then crawl out again.
My only fear was jumping under a train or out of a window.
Don't know why, it just scared me.


One day I was on a train, dreadfully drunk.
I was filthy, I stank.
The train was full
I was bothering everyone: Yelling, cursing.
But I looked at myself and I was glad.
My vileness made me glad!
My only wish was that someone would take me and toss me off the train so I'd bash my brains on the rails.
But they all just sat silently.
They looked away, but they sat silently.
Except for one woman with her five-year-old daughter.
I heard the little girl say:
"Mama, that man's crazy. I'm scared".
But the woman said:
"No, he's not crazy. He's just very, very sad".


I sold my invention to a foreign company.
Today it's used in almost half of all cell phones.
I work there.
But that's not important.
The woman is now my wife and the girl is my daughter.
We also have a son. He's 4 years old.


Is that it?
No, there's more.
Me, I should have died in the gutter.
But I didn't.
Because one person, just one looked at me a little more closely than everyone else.
And didn't let me remain...
...in my lonely wretchedness.

#Adapted From A Russian True Story