Polish

Name’s Dave Wozniak. Only, no one calls me that. Everyone calls me Polish. The nickname stuck almost as quickly as my sentence did.

On paper, I’m doing twenty years for attempted murder. It looks bad, I know. It also sounded worse when some bloke in a wig says it out loud in court, along with a list of accusations and claims I’m a violent, unstable man. To be honest, I wanted to thump him for what he said, but later, I realised maybe he’s half right. I don't think I'm unstable; George said that impulsive would be a better description for how I am.

When people hear I’m in for attempted murder, they build a story in their heads: pub fight, knife, bit of bravado, bad luck, wrong crowd. That sort of thing.

Truth is, it wasn’t some stranger.

It was my mother I stabbed.

But let me step back a sec. I was born in Poland, and if you’ve never grown up in a house where you learn the sound of a bottle cap twisting before you learn how to feel safe, then good for you. I mean it. I’m not doing that British thing you lot do where you pretend you’re fine and then complain anyway. If you had a normal mum, one who made you feel protected, you’ve already won a lottery I didn’t even know existed till I was older.

My dad left. People judge him for that, like leaving is the worst thing a parent can do. I used to, too, till I understood why he ran. I didn’t get angry at him for going, not after I got old enough to realise what he was escaping. Yeah, I hated him for not taking me with him, especially when he started a new life and a new family. I kept on praying he would come get me, take me to live with them, but he just went on without me. I resented that, and I resented them. I felt forgotten, but now I see the truth: the only way he could get away from her was by leaving me behind. I was just a bargaining chip. I can’t be that mad. He just wanted to escape her that much. I know she used to still mess with him and his new life, on occasion.

When he died, it hit me in a way I didn’t expect. Not just grief, but this bitter little thought that he got out for good, and I was still stuck.

Mum drank. Drunk off her tits was her norm.

When she wasn’t drinking, she was looking for a reason to. When she was drinking, she was looking for someone to blame for how her life turned out. Without Pop’s, that someone was me.

When I was little, you took what you were given because you didn’t know there were other versions of family. You think everyone’s house feels like that. You think everyone’s stomach drops when the front door goes, and you think everyone learns to read mood like weather, to watch eyes and hands and the way someone breathes. You get good at it because you have to.

Then you get older, and you start to push back, and that’s when it changes. A lot of kids think getting bigger makes you safer. It does, sometimes. It did for me with the shouting, slaps and the kicking. You grow shoulders, you grow height, you grow that thicker skin everyone bangs on about. You learn to take a hit and not flinch. You learn how to look someone in the eye and not fold.

So she found other ways.

I’m not giving you the details. Not because I’m trying to keep secrets, but because some things don’t need airing out like dirty laundry for entertainment. I’ll say it clean, though, so you understand the shape of it.

She didn’t just hurt me. She humiliated me.

In ways a kid should never have to carry. She did it like it was funny. Like it was her right. Like, I was just something in her house she could break when she was bored.

I’ve never been good at talking about that. Not in court, not in the cop’s endless interviews, not even with my wife. I tried once, it just came out wrong, like my mouth was full of stones, and I just felt this flash like It was my fault. I should have stopped her, and there's no way she was going to believe it happened. I saw her face change, and I hated myself for putting it there. After that, I swallowed it. That’s what men do, isn’t it? You swallow it, you get on with it, you build a life and pretend outward that no one touched you.

So, when I got old enough, I left Poland.

England wasn’t some fairy tale, but it was distant. It was a chance to be someone she couldn’t reach. I worked whatever I could, hands-on jobs, long shifts, forklift driving. Nothing glamorous. Honest graft. I rented where I could, slept where I could, and told myself that if I just kept moving forward, I’d outrun her shadow.

For a while, I did.

Then I met my wife.

She was fiery, proper fire, the kind of woman who calls you out when you’re being a muppet and kisses you like she means it. She made me feel like a normal man. We got married and had a daughter.

My mother found out. Of course she did.

Toxic people have radar for happiness.

She turned up like she’d never done anything wrong, all soft voice and pitiful eyes, like she was the victim of a life that just happened to her. She used my wife to weasel her way in, little messages, little visits, little loving mother-in-law performances.

For a bit, I wanted to believe it. Not because I’m stupid, but because hope is a dangerous thing when you’ve been starved of it your whole life. You tell yourself maybe she’s older now, maybe she’s tired, maybe she finally realised what she did but truth was I didn’t have it in me to fight her off, I was just so tired trying to provide and do what was right so it felt easier to accept her bullshit and at least pretend to believe her even if i keep her at arms length. If she’s lying, I can always cut her off... so I thought.

She hadn’t changed. She’d just got smarter.

Life wasn’t perfect with my wife and me.

Money pressure, stress, all the usual stuff that grinds people down, but mum poured poison into the cracks. Whispered that I was a screw-up, that I’d never be stable, that my wife should protect our daughter from me. She did it in that slow way, drip by drip, so it never looked like an attack, just “concern”.

Then the divorce came.

That’s when Mum’s real plan showed itself.

Papers turned up. She was going for access to my daughter, painting us both as unfit. Unsafe. Unstable. Lawyer’s spiel dressed it up in nice words, but the meaning was simple. She wanted her hands on my child.

I was living in a caravan at work at that point, in the Forklift yard, long shifts, nowhere fancy. I knew I weren’t winning any custody battle on my own. Not against someone who could cry on demand and play innocent. My wife was a good mum, better than I deserved, but she was tired, emotional and hurt, and my mum knew exactly which buttons to press.

So I panicked.

That’s the bit that is hard to admit. Panic makes you stupid. Panic makes you think one big gesture will fix what needs patience and planning. It's me being that impulsive twat again.

I didn’t go there wanting to kill her.

I went there wanting her scared; I wanted her to back off. I wanted her to go back to Poland and leave us in peace. I wanted to protect my daughter from the kind of childhood I survived. I wanted to be the wall between them, and I thought giving her a dose of fear would build that wall. At least, that’s what I tell myself nowadays. In the moments I’m being completely honest? I wasn’t thinking. I was angry, and I acted on that anger, and in doing so, I gave her exactly what she needed.

One moment becomes the only moment anyone cares about. The courts don’t do nuance. They don’t do history that doesn’t fit their narrative. They do headline words. Attempted murder. And when you spin, “Attempted to murder his own mother” slapped as the leading statement no one wants to see passed that. They’ve made up their mind about you, the courts and press, they do like clean narratives that fit in a file and on an article.

I’m not pretending I’m innocent. I crossed a line I should never have crossed. But I’m telling you straight, the intent mattered to me, even if no one else cared. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done, because now I’m locked away for twenty years, and I can’t be there to keep her away from my daughter. That’s a special kind of hell. It’s not the prison food, not the noise, not the tension, but the helplessness. Knowing the one person you’d burn the world for is out there unprotected, and you’ve got no hands on the steering wheel to keep them away from danger.

In here, you see a lot of men who act hard and don’t feel anything. Most of it’s theatre. Underneath, everyone’s carrying something, even the ones who’d never admit it. Me, I’m not ashamed to say it, I miss my daughter so much it’s like a physical thing. Like pressure in my chest. I write letters to her and my ex-wife. Too many, probably. Some of them read like anger, because that’s the language I know. George tells me to calm it down. He’s right. He always is when it comes to thinking ahead, and you know what, by listening to him after two years, my wife agreed to a video call and supervised visitation with my daughter. He even watched our cell door and allowed me time to break down after I received the news that I could see my daughter, and my mother was out of the picture. He stood in front of our cell and refused to let anyone come in, whilst I was an emotional wreck on the other side.

That’s the other part of my story. George Merrick.

When he first turned up, I thought he’d be like the rest, temporary. In and out. We call it transient. Most are in a year or under; I was surprised to learn he was a five-year man, but that's still small change to my twenty. He’s a bloke who kept his head down, at least, at first. He was quiet, read a lot, and watched everything that went on. Honestly, that man notices everything. He’s also got this way of thinking that makes you feel like he’s ten steps ahead, even when he’s just sat there with a book.

He asked to bunk up, and I said yeah because he didn’t look like a problem. I didn’t want some spice head or some loud gobshite in my space. He was respectful. Clean. Straight. In prison, that matters. My cell’s got order in it, even if it looks like chaos to an outsider. I collect things you see. Sauce, jam sachets, bits and pieces that make life bearable. I built shelves out of cardboard and made it work. I like knowing where my stuff is. I like knowing what I’m dealing with. That’s how I stay level.

George fitted into that without trying to dominate it. He didn’t take the piss. He didn’t push. He just existed in the space like he’d been there a while already, learning the rules without making a song and dance about it, but he owned his space without making me feel he was pushing his boundaries or trying to make some domination point.

And then things happened. Prison is always one bad day away from going sideways. A wrong look. A rumour. Someone testing you because they’re bored. George ended up in situations he shouldn’t have been in, and I ended up in situations I’d have chosen anyway because that’s who I am.

George saved my life, properly saved it. More than once.

That sounds dramatic, but that’s what it is. In here you expect snakes. You expect people to smile at you while they weigh up what they can take. You don’t expect someone to stand between you and a blade because it’s the right thing to do. You don’t expect loyalty from a man who can barely tolerate small talk.

So when I tell you I owe him everything, I mean it.

He’s not an easy bloke. I’m not romanticising it. He’s stubborn. He overthinks. He likes things a certain way. He doesn’t sleep right. He can go quiet for hours like his brain’s chewing on something it won’t share. Sometimes he says things too blunt and it rubs people up wrong. Sometimes he sees patterns where others see feelings, and that can make him look cold when he isn’t.

But he is a good man. Better than most of the “normal” ones walking around on the outside pretending they’re decent.

And he listened.

That’s what people miss. Everyone thinks listening is just being quiet, but most people are quiet because they’re waiting to talk. George is quiet because he’s actually there. When I finally told him about my mother, about what she did, about how it messed my head up and made me react like a cornered animal, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t give me pity. He didn’t try to fix it with some cheesy line. He just stayed still and let me get it out.

No one’s ever done that for me.

So here’s my truth, as plain as I can make it. I am violent when I’m pushed. I have a temper. I can be impulsive. I can also be loyal to the death, because once you’ve lived through certain things, you stop treating loyalty like a nice idea and start treating it like survival.

My daughter is the centre of my world. I might have lost my freedom, but I haven’t lost that. Every decision I make in here, every fight, it’s for her. It’s so that one day, if I get a chance, I can be a father she doesn’t have to be ashamed of. Even if all I ever get is an occasional video call, some photos and letters, I want her to read my name and know I tried to be a better man than the headlines and so called justice system labelled me.

Then George told me what he’d clocked, his frame-up, and the missing kids.

I don’t think he understood how hard that landed. I know personally what it is when adults do what they want to children, and the world looks away. I’ve got skin in this game, I went through it, and I have a daughter. I’m not gonna just sit still when someone’s hurting kids, am I? George thinks it’s his burden because some gun landed in his car and his head lives in patterns and responsibility, like if he can map it, he has to carry it. He doesn’t.

But I’m doing twenty years anyway, It aint like I can go kicking in doors and smashing in kiddy snatchers outside these walls, but I can do something else, I can make sure he’s ready when he gets outta here. Because if George is going to stop what’s going on, he’s going to have to become a darker version of himself, one that can do what needs doing without flinching. I’ll help him build that, brick by brick, because some things don’t get fixed by hoping.

And I’ll make dam sure he survives this shithole long enough to get the chance to put a stop to that crap.