It's The Sweet Word For Addiction. Addiction On The Example Of One Life

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

She was born on December twenty-first. She remembered that for sure. There were inaccuracies with the year, but these years, they run somehow too fast - there is no point in memorizing. My father was a communist. Stern face, eternal suit, dark car. She hardly remembered her mother, dark hair, flowered dress. One day the father came and with a face even more stony said that the mother was no more. My father taught that one should speak briefly and “to the point”, phrases like “the bread is over” and no details. Details are dangerous. She had to be able to keep quiet and cook - "to save the family."

Her world split after the death of her mother: home - to wait for her father and dinner, and for short trips and a view from the window. The streets of Kiev were filled with tattered skinny people with swollen bellies, some lay motionless and looked into nowhere. Brown rats darted past them. Her father reassured her:

- The daughter of a communist - must be strong! Yes, and there is no one on the streets, it seemed like a fictional world.

Father's driver confirmed that he was not there. And she believed. During the war, my father had a reservation, he took it to a distant southern city and led from there. Those same suits, shirts, a hat and a sweaty forehead from the eastern heat.

She managed to see a lot of terrible things from the train window. And this, too, blurred and melted in the words of my father - “all this is not there. It seemed!"

She became acutely dependent on her father, only he, coming home from work, could calm her down. While he was gone, she sat by the window, swaying and howling softly, it was impossible to cry out loud. "She is the daughter of a communist and must be strong."

The father came, she calmed down. Only when he came home, he neatly hung an umbrella and a hat in the front hall, did the itching alarm release her.

One day my father brought a young colleague to visit. Charming and talkative, he was so unlike her reserved father. The father said that "the guy is a real communist and stick with him." She went with him to the theater and to dances, diligently starched the collar to her dress and was silent in the theater. He made an offer and they moved to Kirov Street. The young communist made a quick career and the state rewarded him for his work. He went to Moscow on business trips, it was so scary and solemn and it is never known whether there will be a promotion or "ten years without the right to correspond." The son of Vasily, Vasichka, was born.

The husband went on another business trip, and at night her father came for her, ordered her to pack her clothes, took Vassenka in his arms and took her home. Only answered questions about her husband:

- Gone and let's not talk about it. It seemed to you. You gave birth to a son like that, alone.

And very quickly she believed what it seemed. In the haze of the post-war years, it was convenient, to forget, not to think, it was easier not to let slip, not to get lost in the correct answers in the questionnaires. It was even easier for her this way, her father and son, all together - a simple and understandable world. Father became decrepit, he was knocked down by the news of Stalin's death.

The son was growing up, and she became acutely dependent on her son. His mood, his thoughts, his deeds - everything was important to her. The world of her son was different from her home world. Kindergarten, school affairs, friends, girlfriend. There was so much life in everything. late in the evening she came to her son, turned on the light, sat down next to her and asked about life. He was her "ray in the tunnel", her life, the key to another bright life. She pondered her son's stories and in the morning dictated to her son how to do the right thing in his stories. The son became furious, refused to speak, ran away from home. But she was looking for him through friends and continued to question, patronize and impose her own. My son and his friends were caught stealing a bicycle. Old friends of the father helped, the son ended up in the army instead of prison. And then she could not find a place for herself, came to him, wrote almost every day.

He ended up in the fleet, on a nuclear submarine. Then Soviet submarines sailed around the globe. Several months of silence - the submarine under the belly of a tourist liner went to Cuba, rising only in the port of Havana. When her son returned, she was absolutely happy. His gifts: corals and exotic shells were always prominently displayed in the sideboard.

The son found a job, was busy all day, hastily dined, ran away and returned late with the smell of perfume. She was very much afraid in advance that he would bring "some girl" and destroy their usual way of life. The girl was big-eyed and modest, she darted into her son's room and spread books and notebooks on the table there. She was very angry with the girl: her son's attention was diffused and did not belong to her completely. The son spent a lot of time with his young wife, he could go to the cinema or to dance. And she sat alone and sadly waited in an empty apartment. She hated and suspected her son's wife. A couple of years later, she began to hunt her down and in bitter triumph caught the young woman cheating. She brought her son there. So he lost his wife and best friend. When he threw his wife's things out of the apartment, and she screamed that she did it only for the sake of a possible child, because the nuclear boat made him sterile. Then she grieved for her son and rejoiced, because now he will only be with her.

The son hardly came to his senses after the divorce, he also became painfully attached to his mother, ran home immediately after work, he shared everything only with her. If he lingered, then she was angry and reprimanded her son that she had put her whole life on him, and now he must be with her body and soul, that he is her only light at the end of the tunnel and everything else just seems to him.

In the fierce nineties, the son opened his own factory, made repairs in the apartment and learned to drink with a business partner. Periodically, women appeared in his life, he always took them to show to his mother. She studied praises and found fault. This deficiency always grew and seemed to her and her son grandiose. The son threw passion. He was sad and drank. Gradually he began to drink heavily. Fall into alcoholic delirium and wander around the house with a knife. He was "choked by a snake" and he "hunted for it." Frightened neighbors asked to take care of their son. But here the phrase about “it just seemed” came in handy. She believed that Vasichka was not like that, it seems to them, and it seems to her too, because he “does not drink, he just got tired at work and fell down” and the puddle in which he lies “the Dnieper water flows from him after swimming”.

After another episode of chasing snakes, the son was forcibly taken to the hospital, she realized that it might not seem. And then selfless salvation began. She coded her son, took him on hypnosis, pulled out of her homeless friends from the park. And only when the son did not drink for a month or two and started talking about other women, she bought brandy and accidentally "forgot the bottle in the kitchen." The son broke off and again it was possible to save him, heal him. She was in demand and almost happy.

This went on for many years. The son drank, she saved him, told the neighbors that "everything seemed to be." One day the son was too cold and motionless, she decided to "get sick" and covered him with all the blankets in the house. He was found by the neighbors downstairs, they came when the smell became unbearable, they realized they called the police …

She did not understand anything … her son was buried in a closed coffin. She was angry and did not understand why she was there in the cemetery. She was told over and over again, she was angry. After all, "it just seemed to them, and there is nothing wrong." I don't know when her reality changed and she fell into a very happy world. In this world, she is about forty-five, she is waiting for her husband from Moscow with a promotion and is expecting a son from the army. He will come soon, soon and bring her beautiful white corals from Cuba.

P. S. I would ask permission to write. But none of that family remained. For several years she has been lying next to her son and father in an old Kiev cemetery.. To some extent, they were my first clients. I lived door to door and since my school days I saw their story about eternal salvation. My soft voice is trained to soothe just on this neighbor. I really wanted to go home, and for this I had to convince him that the snakes were already leaving.