Fortunae

Well, yes... It was the end of winter when Karolina—you could say barely, or perhaps even "as much as"—an eighteen-year-old girl, having previously decided to set off on a journey, was now getting off the train. She had been preparing for this for quite some time, considering how trapped she felt in her own life—I'm not at all surprised she had dared. Where was she? Well, she turned around, where a rather large plaque hung on the station building, which she—in her incredibly unflattering glasses—noticed. She was in Kołobrzeg. I think it's crucial, before I begin recounting, or telling—whatever you prefer—her story, to describe her appearance. Karolina, while perhaps not terribly ugly, concealed it so meticulously and skillfully that no one—not even I, someone who sees something beautiful in everyone—would have dared to describe her "beauty." The girl had blond hair, which in her case was probably called hair only for lack of a better term. While I, as someone who can quite graphically describe certain phenomena, would call it "hay blonde." I don't think anyone I've ever known had such split ends. Even I, in the heyday of my "anti-beauty," didn't have such a caricature of hair on my head. But let's leave that aside, because—unintentionally—I'll also prejudice the reader against this very colorful character. On her face, as I managed to hint earlier—she wore glasses. Although they weren't as tragic as those lumps from a dozen or even several decades ago, the frames she'd gotten herself completely mismatched with the rest of her face. The girl had a round face, like plump cheeks, and unplugged eyebrows, which those small, oval glasses, the color of a rotten Christmas tree, only accentuated. As she looked around, she could see that she was squinting against the sunlight, preventing anyone from paying any attention to her eyes, which were nevertheless beautiful, with irises the color of pure blue. She was dressed in tight, brown corduroy trousers that didn't match not only her navy blue sports shirt but also the beautiful, sunny summer weather, which was definitely not tolerated by the thick trousers. Karolina, however, seemed completely unconcerned. With that unpleasant grimace of dissatisfaction on her face, dragging a large suitcase filled with equally unflattering clothes, she headed to the pre-paid resort. It was a gift she'd asked for from her parents for her eighteenth birthday. Somewhere subconsciously, she felt that this kind of vacation was very much needed and that—perhaps—it would bring some change and excitement to her life. Because how can you talk about any adventures and memories when she never had a boyfriend, never wore makeup (she probably didn't even know what mascara was judging by her face,(She had a similar experience at a beauty store one day, when she wanted to buy her mom a gift and stumbled upon a relatively expensive Rimella mascara.) She spent all her free time reading completely uninteresting books and studying. Her grades were top of the class, and she was somewhat intelligent, but what good was that if no one wanted to talk to her? I think the real problem was that no one even wanted to get to know her. And they say clothes don't make the man...

***

Now she was unpacking her things and thinking for a long time. She decided to abandon the tedious task of arranging clothes on shelves and headed for the sea—which she'd never seen before. Sure, she'd heard a lot about it, but she'd never been able to understand what all these people saw—beautiful, touching, and romantic—in fifteen square kilometers of water, which was also salty and—at least in Poland—dirty. It was around 7 p.m., so Karolina had about three hours before it got dark, and she could sit in peace on the warm, heated sand by the shore, thinking. What was wrong with her? She'd never really felt it until she started high school. More than half of her current class had a significant other, and the rest had probably already experienced their first kiss, or perhaps their first love. The girl slowly began to envy them all, until she finally realized she was different from them all, that she didn't fit in, and most importantly—not because they did, but because she wanted to. She had always believed that true friends didn't really exist, and after being disappointed by a friend in her last year of elementary school when she started making fun of her in front of the entire class, Karolina promised herself she would never trust anyone again. And so it happened. Loneliness didn't bother her until a moment shortly before her birthday, when she woke up one morning, looked out the window, and was about to settle down for her daily reading when the dustiest, large hardcover book on the highest shelf caught her eye. When she reached for it, it turned out to be an Atlas of Poland. She had never been interested in such things, but this time she decided to do something against her personal principles and began leafing through the atlas, page by page. And then she understood. She realized she knew virtually nothing about the world, about life, about other people. In fact, in those eighteen years, she had done nothing that would truly satisfy her, that would teach her anything, that would move her to tears of despair, or awaken some instinct, perhaps emotion, within her. She was empty inside. And it was then, too, that she decided it was high time to change that. To fill that void, to fill her life... with life. She had to start with the hardest thing for herself—she had to look deep into the empty depths of herself and see something there.

And that was precisely the reason for her stay in Kołobrzeg. She told her parents she wanted to go on such and such a trip, without giving any reasons, of course. Her parents agreed, because their daughter was who she was, but what they could be sure of was her responsibility. And just like that, Karolina found herself by the sea, gazing at it against the backdrop of the setting sun and smiling genuinely for the first time in a long, long time. If she could have seen herself in the mirror then, perhaps she would have understood how much beauty a person could hold within themselves, because such a beautiful and sincere smile is—at least in my opinion—relatively rare. As it began to get dark, Karolina set off back to her accommodations, and then she thought she would start listening to everything people said to her and drawing the appropriate conclusions. As if out of spite, the first thing she noticed were some boys shouting at her about how ugly and ridiculous she was. As usual, Karolina walked past, pretending not to hear, until she remembered her promise. She thought again about what she'd heard, and only then did it sink in—one might even say with twice the force. Sobbing, she ran to her room and lay on the bed for a long time before deciding that instead of crying, she should reconsider the words, "You're so ugly! Do you even know what clothes you should wear?" "Those glasses go well with your ugly figure."