Polish

Name’s Dave Wozniak. Only no one call’s me that. Everyone else Polish, because I am, and it stuck quicker than my sentence did.

On paper I’m doing twenty years for attempted murder. It looks ugly in black and white and yes, it also sounded worse when some bloke in a wig says it out loud in court along with a list of accusations and claim I am a violent unstable man. People hear I’m in for attempted murder and build a story in their heads, pub fight, knife, bit of bravado, bad luck, wrong crowd. That sort of thing.

Truth is, it weren’t some stranger.

It was my mother.

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 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 always judge that, like leaving is the worst thing a parent can do. I used to judge it too, till I understood why he ran. I didn’t get angry at him for going, not after I got old enough to see what he was escaping. Yeah, I hated him for not taking me with him, he started a new life with a new family without me. 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 a bargain deal. I can’t be that mad, he wanted to escape her that much.

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. That was her baseline.

When she weren’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. That someone was usually me.

When I was little, you take what you’re given because you don’t know there’s other versions of a family. You think everyone’s house feels like that. You think everyone’s stomach drops when the front door goes. You think everyone learns to read mood like weather, to watch eyes and hands and the way someone breathes. You get good at it. 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 and the slaps. 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 interviews, not even with my wife. I tried once and it came out wrong, like my mouth were full of stones. 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 like none of it touched you.

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

England weren’t some fairy tale, but it was distance. It was a chance to be someone she couldn’t reach every day. 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. Like I wasn’t just stitched together out of rage and survival. We got married. We had a daughter.

And that’s the bit people need to understand. You can do a lot to me and I’ll take it. I’ll grit my teeth. I’ll fight back if I have to. But when there’s a kid involved, when it’s your kid, something inside you goes cold and sharp. It’s not bravery. It’s not even violence. It’s just certainty. You do not get to touch her world.

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 pity 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 “I’m trying now, I’ve changed” 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 starving 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. If she’s lying I can always cut her off, so I thought.

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

Life weren’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 Mums real plan showed itself.

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

I was living in a caravan at work at that point. 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 some days, but she was tired 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.

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 fear would build that wall.

Instead, 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. They don’t do a lifetime of abuse and how it changes a person’s wiring. They do headline words. Attempted murder. And when you spin, “Attempted to murder his own mother” into the mix, no one wants to see passed that. They’ve made up their mind about you, and 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 hurt her. 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 have 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 is a special kind of hell. 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 and you’ve got no hands on the steering wheel.

In here, you see a lot of men who act hard and don’t feel nothing. Most of it is 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. Too many, probably. Some of them read like anger, because that’s the language I learnt first. George tells me to calm it down. He’s right. He always is when it comes to thinking ahead.

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. Some are in a year or under, he was a five-year man. Still small change to my twenty. He’s a bloke who keeps his head down and counts the days. He’s quiet, reads a lot, watches everything, and he’s 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. Sauce, jam sachets, bits and pieces that make life bearable. I build shelves out of cardboard and make 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.

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. I’m not a man who watches someone get hurt if I can stop it.

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 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 I don’t have, every insult I swallow, 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 a photo and a letter, I want her to read my name and know I tried.

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

I don’t think he understood how hard that landed. I know what it is when adults do what they want to children and the world looks away. I’ve got skin in this game, and I’m not wired to sit still when someone’s hurting kids. George thinks it’s his burden because his head lives in patterns and responsibility, like if he can map it, he has to carry it. He doesn’t. Not with me in the room.

I’m doing twenty years, I can’t kick doors outside these walls, but I can do something else. I can make sure he’s ready. Because if George is going to stop what’s coming when he gets out, 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 will make sure he survives this place long enough to get the chance to put a stop to that shit.

And George, he’s the only reason I still believe trying matters.