Uninvented Stories of Invented People
Шрифт:
I am given an injection and taken to the surgery. I am thinking that it’s worth being a patient as soon as you are able to put the high-knee boots on. I lie down on to a cold surgery table. They tie me up, inject something into the vein. The nurses admire the string bracelets on my arms and I feel a pleasant wave spreading throughout the entire of my body. Darkness. I have my consciousness gradually returning to me. I feel like I am a snowdrop and I sprout through the snow. My head and chest ache severely. Mom is beside me and gives me some water. She says that everything is good and that I am a fighter. I am very much pleased, but it hurts immensely. I’m crying. An injection comes and I fall asleep.
I am brought home. There is a bandage over my chest with tubes sticking out from it. I’m scared. What if my breast is not there under the gauze and the bandages? What if it’s totally cut off from me? I’m weeping. Mom says, everything is on its place and I should stop crying, since I’m a fighter and will get over everything. The doctor said that according to lab results the tumor was benign and I should give birth to a child as soon as possible. To give birth? Horrors! What’s that supposed to mean – give birth. I haven’t even been kissed yet! Creepy.
Mom gives me injections and makes me lie over my chest “so that the liquid draws away.” I am hurt and offended. Why did that happen to me? In the evening mom comes into the room and says that DAD will come tomorrow. Tomorrow is Thursday. I jump out of the bed and run to the fridge. I ask if there are ingredients for the Olivier Salade. “Daddy will come, I want to treat him to my salad so that he could enjoy it.” Mom asks me to lie and calm down. I don’t surrender. I find everything I need, but take out a promise from mom that she will bring peas and mayonnaise in the morning. I barely sleep all the night in anticipation.
The meal is done and I am waiting for him in expectance of praise compliments. I have my best pajamas on. I am desperate to please him, waiting by the window not to miss the moment. By the evening I realize, that probably mom has got something wrong and he would arrive the next Thursday.
He did not come over neither that nor the next Thursday.
A year later, he once called to greet me a "happy birthday" and said that then he had hardships at work. But I no longer believed that we were a special family. The realization pulsed in my temples. “Dad, just thank you for my life, you’ve been there in the beginning.”
My childhood dream was to sit down at my daddy’s lap and talk of how I was getting on. Just so that he gave me a real dad’s hug and said that his girl was the best in the world. I’d ran it over in my head for millions of times. Yet, there by the window, I realized that, disappointedly, it would never come true.
The only time when I managed to talk to him and utter how much I loved and missed him and wanted to be proud of me, was the day of his funeral. I guess my soul motivation to obtain all those knowledges and grades was to proof worthy of his love. I was twenty-four. It was only by chance that I found out he had passed. Having arrived I saw the whole of his family standing next to the coffin. Three families to be more precise and the latest of his wives. Everyone considered me a “bastard”, since my mother bore from a married man. I didn’t care at all. I went up to him to say goodbye and tell of everything that was there in my soul. However, I had no anger, just the grief because of no change to be close. All his former families were up in arms as they thought I would claim the rights for the “facilities and mobilities”. They simply wouldn’t comprehend of my love and indifference to their financial issues. There was a man of my kin in front of me, my Daddy. The one who rejected me, but was, nevertheless, beloved.
I had been standing long while turning to him in my thoughts, when, of a sudden, I felt the hand of his latest wife over my shoulder. She bent down and said: “Move over, it’s his family over here.” I immediately replied: “I am at my father’s funeral and will stand where I find convenient. Have no worries I shall definitely not visit your exequy.” On that wonderful note I kissed my daddy goodbye and left. I went with inner sense of absolution and a realization that he was just like that. However, the most valuable things he gifted me were my life and my wonderful genes. Thus, no matter what, I love and forgive him. In my mind, he remained an ideal loving person. Though spuriously, but he remained my ideal father. The Gestalt was closed.
P. S. I am writing this chapter with a huge message. I believe that once it’s read, a telephone of some little boy or girl, or of a grown up one, would flash out “Daddy” and, on the other end of the line there will sound: “Hello, kiddo, it’s me, daddy… How are you? What do you say if we go and ride swings and eat your favorite ice-cream? I miss you so much…”
It could be that somewhere a long-awaited ringer of an old telephone would sound and a gray-haired old man will hear the cherished words: “Daddy, we haven’t heard each other for ages. You are so important to me, I love you… Forgive me for not calling you that long I’m on my way to your place.”
Bottom line: we are not free to choose our own parents. Many psycho traumas received in childhood indeed influence and predetermine our life. However, when adults, we are to choose our path ourselves and are capable of working through and letting go all the resentments inside. Forgiveness is the single and the most valuable luxury we can grant to ourselves! Yes, that’s right, exactly to ourselves. They, our parent, “knew not what they did”. Just the same, as sometimes we don’t. Everyone makes mistakes. That’s the way we are wired.
Chapter three
•Love •
Zelenin Drops*
A year after, I began to grow firm in my knowledge. No one was waiting at home, therefore, I had to stay late behind the hours at work. Gradually, I acquired my own patients and their number grew. Every morning at 7.45, when I arrived in my old Kalina Zhiguli auto, inherited from my mother, as a gift for my twenty-fifth birthday, the male department patients lined up next to the windows and shouted joyfully: “Good morning Ms. Clover! Have a nice day!” I always amiably waved them my hand. The observation premises windows overlooked our iatric parking lot. There were people with psychosis or suicidal intentions observed there, as well as some, who had committed a murder for delusional reasons.
A psychiatric in-patient facility was divided into two units: observation and care treatment. The care treatment unit supports those patients, who had already overcome psychosis and were somewhat in a better condition. The observation unit was for those, who needed enhanced supervision so that they did not cause any harm to themselves or to the others.
In general, all endogenous processes (those that progress from within), including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, recurrent depressive disorders, are difficult to comprehend by ordinary humans. If put it straight, even us, doctors, do not know why these biochemistry abnormalities occur. The disease eats away emotion, destroys destinies and breaks the will. Should all human diseases be explained by psychosomatic nature, then we would be powerless.