==LITHUANIA==

A passer-by,

I am sorry I address to you this way, but I do not know your real name. I even do not know who is going to read this letter or who will find it. I hope you'll understand me, though my pain is not understandable today. I am left alone and forgotten by everyone like an only tree torn by winds and storms. There is no pity for a weaker one in the wild nature. But is a human wild? It is said that he is higher than everything around him. He can think, create and feel. It is said that a man can sympathize, comfort, love and be honest. It seems that every human being has got a lot of nice qualities, but alas I haven't experienced them in all my life . . . .

Who said that a man understands others, takes care of people around him and never leaves them?

I am absolutely lonely today. I was lonely yesterday and the day before yesterday I was lonely a year ago too. Do you know how it feels to stay by oneself, to hear depressing silence, to feel gloomy emptiness instead of love... Every morning I wake up and feel a weak pounding. The pounding of the dead heart suffering from anger and contempt. The heart sunk in alcohol. A silent room, drawn grey curtains, a gloomy haze. I hear only a soft rustle of wind in dark bushes and a calm knock of rain drops against the broken glass of my window. Tell me, can you feel that strange moaning scattering in the air, like a torn-away canto of longing?

Days pass by very slowly and hopelessly, but this day is the last to me.... Do you have an idea how difficult is the life of the mother who has lost her child and who is sinking in the quag of alcohol and despair. Nobody can help me; I feel that I go deeper and deeper into the mud. I feel death holding me tightly in its arms. I want to see the eyes of my son one more time, to hear his sonorous laughter. I can't clearly remember my life because I haven't been sober for many months. The road of my life was long and miserable, slippery and twisting. There were no flowers of joy in it. I have never found any stones of happiness either. Only the dust and gravel of sorrow and empty hopes.

Today my feet are stepping on this earth for the last time. The thorns of sins and poverty make me feel the pain for the last time. Today I say good-by to the cruel world, to people and to the hell created by these people.

I remember once my eyes were so blue. They are empty and grey now, looking at the early rays of the rising sun.... I remember dark autumn mornings when I was getting up and running to my mother. I was a little girl then. But my cold bare feet have never been warmed up under her blanket. My mother's hands have never stroked my head. I do not remember her tales, because I have never heard them. I don't remember her lips, because she has never kissed me. She used to lie with her face down on a dirty pillow after a heavy drinking.