Chapter 10. In Search of Self
In fact, I've never really liked expressions like "finding myself". It is as if there is something pompous to the point of theatricality in them. Maybe these words are just used too often, where they should and where they shouldn't be, and their meaning has become corrupted? But now I'm saying it myself. Have I reached the point of excessive pathetic? Or is it appropriate now?.. Well, let the reader judge for himself whether it's appropriate or not.
I went in search of myself not after my war of independence, but at the same time. And it didn't end then. Its first and hottest phase was over. The struggle itself has been going on ever since, more or less explicitly. My family's desire to surround me with controlling care, to entangle me with it like a net, never went away. So for the rest of my life I had to hold the front line, so to speak. Whenever there was a sign of weakness, the pressure was immediately felt. It was impossible to retreat from the conquered positions.
Such an analogy, comparing my life and family relations with the war, may look strange. However, it is true: I am always at war. Not because I like it, but because since then I have not been able to do much without fighting. And the battles have sometimes lasted not even for years, but for decades.
One of the longest and most difficult was the battle with my father's drinking. But there was one more going on in parallel with it. Not so long and fierce, but also important. Vital for me.
My father never took care of me, and could do practically nothing about it. When Mum talked about him helping out more, he refused flatly, or was rude if he was drunk. Eventually the subject was closed for a long time. His participation was limited by the fact that he carried me from the bed to the stroller and from the stroller to the bed. He also helped take me outside and then bring me back in. That's pretty much it. When drinking became a daily occurrence, that became a problem too. My drunk father dropped me on the floor several times, moving me between the bed and the stroller, and I hurt myself badly. I realised that the first slightly more unfortunate fall would just kill me. So I often had to wait a long time, lying in the bed or sitting in the wheelchair, for him to sober up. He saw that I no longer trusted him, was offended, and scandalised me about it — barely standing on his feet and shouting that everything would be fine, and that I shouldn't show off.
It was getting harder. Fortunately, thanks to my mother, it was possible to live. But at some point I noticed that she was drinking more and more often. In general, she drank only on big holidays, at the table, with guests. And now she started to have a drink with my father on minor occasions. And then for no reason at all. My father would just bring another bottle and offer my mother a drink. Previously, she did not agree, then she began to agree. More and more often.
I realised it was bad. Drinking had a strong effect on my mother's head. Unlike my father, she did not become aggressive, but she started to forget and confuse the simplest things, to do anything, and sometimes even something dangerous — for example, once she knocked over a mug of hot tea on me, almost turned the stroller on the street several times, and other things happened. She couldn't do what she needed to do to care for me, and she could also fell asleep very soundly, so that I couldn't call her and was in pain, unable to turn round on my own. At the same time, she, like my father, believed that everything was fine, that she was doing everything normally, and she was offended when I tried to explain that this was not the case. And I could see that she was slowly becoming involved with the bottle. Remembering her mother, her grandmother Vera, who had been drinking, I realised that she probably had the same tendency. And it was clear that if she started drinking seriously too, I would be finished. I wouldn't survive. Things were already very difficult — and with two alcoholics on a binge, I wouldn't stand a chance at all.
That's when I started another battle. Now it was, without exaggeration, a battle for physical survival.
At first, I just asked my mother not to drink, tried to persuade her, to explain something, to prove. Then I swore every time she drank, even on holidays. Because, firstly, I had a hard time after the holidays. And secondly, alcohol addiction is such a crap that can grow if you leave it even the slightest loophole. Especially if there is a predisposition. And I demanded that my mother not drink at all, ever. This demand for individual "prohibition" especially angered her. She was also stubborn and didn't tolerate any pressure. Again there was a struggle of character, who would bend who. I was not going to give in, — after all, if she fought for the pleasure of drinking, then I fought for life.
It looked bad from the outside. Victor had gone completely wild, and was beginning to dictate his will to his mother, forbidding her to have a drink. What right has he got?! No one knew the details, no one saw what problems and dangers arose because of this "harmless" shot. Mum told the relatives that everything was fine, and that I just wanted to command everyone. She was sure of it herself. I didn't really try to explain anything to them. It was no use. No one believed in my father's drunken scandals either, even though my mother told them about it. In front of witnesses he tried to behave properly, and everyone was convinced that the rumours about his antics were exaggerated. And here, who would believe me? So I just accepted the new wave of universal condemnation, snapping and "stabbing" in response.
Persuasion and arguments did not help. I had to move on. I thought — I should do something that would shock my mum and make her realise how serious it was. So I decided to start biting. Yes, that's right. It wasn't the smartest idea of my life. The only explanation is that I was close to panic and despair when I thought about my future prospects. When my mum came up to me when she was drunk, I bit her hand — so hard that it bruised like two rows of teeth. It didn't work. She looked at me with drunken bewilderment, then swore — that's the whole reaction. When she sobered up, she preferred not to start a conversation about it. As a result, after a couple of such escapades of mine, I left the foolish idea.
I started protesting in other ways. Like breaking dishes. When I ate — I was still eating by myself then — I'd throw my plate on the floor. Mum would scold, but that's all. I started cutting up my clothes. I cut pieces out of the shirts and T-shirts I was wearing. Mum went on principle and wouldn't change my clothes, waiting for me to ask for them. I did not ask. So I sat there for days in a holey one. My friends saw it, realised that something wrong was going on, but they didn't ask me anything. I cut up the oilcloth they used to cover the table. My mum would stand it for a while, and then she would change my clothes and change the oilcloth so that the relatives wouldn't see it.
I was pretty good at restraining my emotions then, but once I snapped and broke my mum's brooch. Nothing valuable, ordinary jewelry. But it was her most beautiful piece of jewelry. Five minutes later, I felt ashamed and disgusted. And when she saw what I did, she just silently put the debris away.
That was one of the two things in my life that I am ashamed of to this day. The second, a little earlier, was the only time I didn't keep my word.
And so the fight continued, becoming more and more irreconcilable. Mum and I fought every time she had a drink. I heard a lot of things about myself then. One of the most vivid epithets was "scumbag". And then there were the unprintable ones. My father at such moments willingly supported her, and from him I received even more scolding. However I didn't give in. Then, having exhausted all the means of protest available to me, I went on hunger strikes. But that was later.
...In the meantime, everything was boiling and boiling not only in our family, but also around us. Society was going through another era of change.
The Soviet Union lived out its last months. It was beginning to fall apart, but it was still holding on. It was even capable of frightening some people. I remember once I wanted to record a tape of Igor Talkov. He was the bravest protest singer then. Many of his songs were directed against the Soviet government and the Communist Party. And it turned out that it was impossible to find him in any of the outlets that recorded cassettes to order. Although he performed at concerts, was heard on television and radio. As a result, Aunt Svetlana asked one of her acquaintances to record the rebellious performer. He took the risk, having first enquired who would be listening, whether the people were reliable. I felt like a member of a clandestine group. Although I don't know what would be the penalty for recording or listening to such a tape. I think nothing at that time. However, people continued to be afraid, out of habit.
The fateful year 1991 has come. The famous referendum was organised to decide the future of the country. By that time, I had already become of age and was able to take part in it. I have already told you what my beliefs were at that time. So when the ballot box was brought to my house, I ticked the box in favour of the liquidation of the Union. The people who came with the ballot box, a man and two women, observed my actions against the rules. And I didn't hide it. When one of the women saw where I was pointing my pen, she cried out: "Wait! You're crossing out the wrong thing!" The man took her by the shoulder and said: "Don't interfere. He knows what he has to do on his own."
As a result of the referendum, the USSR ceased to exist, and I have been joking ever since that it was Gorbachev and I who liquidated it together. Almost all of my older relatives voted in favour of keeping it. So my joke which I like to repeat did not find understanding among them, to put it mildly. But their claims to me were enriched with one more fat point.
I consider the Bielavieža Accords, which so many still curse, to be one of the best events I have seen. Even if the CIS that emerged as a result of it was useless and unnecessary, but at least the Soviet Union was gone. I have retained great respect for Gorbachev ever since, despite his not-so-correct stance on some issues later on. In any case, he is one of the greatest political figures of the 20th century. Even if, according to him, he himself did not wish for this turn of events.
When it was over, we found ourselves living in an independent state, in the Republic of Belarus. This is exactly what I wanted. But I must admit that it was hard to get used to it. When there were upheavals in Russia in the early 90s, I thought, "This is what is going on in our country...", — and then I corrected myself: not "in our country", but "in theirs". It's a different country now.
At that time things were going well for us. First of all, it concerned the growth of national self-consciousness. Historical symbols returned to the country. It became possible to buy books on the history of Belarus, which had not been available before and could not be, and to read in them many things that helped to look at this history from an unusual perspective. There appeared a feeling of freedom — some kind of special, not personal freedom. The freedom of a whole people. I savoured that feeling.
The financial side of life was also improving, having become more prosperous in comparison with the previous years. We ate well, bought everything we needed. And even from my pension I could afford quite expensive cigarettes from time to time.
I started smoking at the age of eighteen. I always wanted to, but I waited until I was old enough so that no one could object. After my eighteenth birthday, the coveted cigarettes were in my hands. I smoked about half a pack a day, and each cigarette was a great pleasure.
This went on for a little over three years. My mother and grandmother persuaded me to quit all the time. They realised how dangerous smoking was with my health and extremely sedentary lifestyle. So did I. But it was very pleasant to smoke... In the end they managed to persuade me to take a break from smoking. They said, "If you don't want to quit, at least give yourself a break!" I thought it wouldn't hurt. But if I was going to agree to a break, it should at least be substantial. And I promised not to smoke for a year.
What a difficult year it's been for me! It would seem that I had not smoked so long and not so much; nevertheless, I was painfully short of cigarettes. No matter what I thought about, my thoughts kept coming back to them. I dreamt about them at night. When I woke up, I felt cheated and robbed, and suffered even more. A year went by like that. By the end of it, I felt better. Besides, the thought that there was not much left, and that soon I would finally smoke. A pack of good cigarettes bought in advance was waiting for its hour.
When the long-awaited day came, I, full of pleasant anticipation, printed it out, took a cigarette in my teeth, took out a match and put my hand up, intending to tickle it on the box... And then I thought: "Why am I doing this? Because sooner or later I'll have to quit anyway. And then I'll have to go through all the torments I've experienced again. So is it worth it to start again?" Thinking and struggling with temptation, I sat there for a few minutes with a cigarette in my mouth and a struck match in my hand. Then I put it in the box, put the cigarette in the packet, called my father and gave it all to him.
A lot of time has passed since then, and now even cigarette smoke is unpleasant to me. Although, oddly enough, sometimes I still dream that I smoke. But now I am already surprised by this in my dream. I'm surprised and I blame myself. Then I wake up and think, "Good thing it was just a dream."
Almost simultaneously with the start of smoking, I began growing my beard. Although it was not exactly my initiative. Here is how it happened. When my beard first started growing, I was shaved by my mum. It went on for a while, and then she said: "Why do I have to shave you? It's not really a woman's job. Let your father shave you. Let him do at least that." When she told my father that shaving would now be his responsibility, he naturally refused. And I was not at all happy about the prospect, as his hands were shaking from the drink. At the same time, I didn't want to insist that my mother shave me. She said she wouldn't do it again on principle, and I'd have to fight again to get my way. I said: "Well, if there's no one to shave me, then I'll grow back." Then I got used to it, and I started to like being bearded myself.
In general, at that time I had all sorts of ideas and desires. For example, I wanted to get a tattoo. And certainly something from the criminal, prison. I read articles on this topic, viewed collections of images, and chose. I was also thinking about piercing my ear and wearing a cross-shaped earring. This would really have been for the sake of pure show off. Luckily, I had the sense not to do either of those things.
In the early nineties, we got cable TV, which showed two films a day — the same films that we occasionally went to video salons to see. It was pure happiness. I remained a fan of such cinema, bought film posters and posters with the actors. By that time they had completely covered — so that they almost replaced wallpaper — the spare walls in the common room, the hallway and my room, where one wall was also covered with photos and clippings from newspapers and magazines with the same actors and shots from the films. And so it all came straight home. I watched a lot, not missing a single show. Aunt Svetlana already remarried at that time, moved in with her new husband, and now lived not far away, within walking distance. My cousins visited us almost daily, as if in a free video salon.
A couple of years of such pleasure was enough to satiate myself and start treating all this much more calmly, without greed and trepidation. And after some more time, I decided to remove posters from the walls and tear off photos and clippings. This hobby had become outdated and irrelevant.
They were taken down by Andrei, who by that time had come back after the second breakup. Now he was no longer a child, but a teenager — but his negative qualities remained with him. To the previous set was added the habit of vulgar speaking. There wasn't a situation or a scene from the film that he didn't accompanied with a lewd comment. His greed seemed to have even increased. He was always trying to make money from everything. He resold little things. He often bought things for me in shops, and always took a third or a quarter of the purchase price for a service. He also drank and smoked in secret. The latter we often did together, locked in my room. True, he quit before me, and then, together with my mother and grandmother, he nagged me about smoking.
His virtues consisted in a sharp mind, creative talents and a great sense of humour. With all the dissimilarity of characters and mutual claims, we were interesting to communicate. We were always joking, laughing. We invented a lot of activities — from recording homemade "radio programmes" and "radio plays" on a tape recorder to writing humorous and parodic texts together, from collecting all sorts of things to collecting music, from re-photographing my posters to talking on a variety of topics, often going on all night long. We would sit at the table in total darkness and talk.
Soon we couldn't go a day without talking. And when he went away for a couple of summer months to the countryside, it was an ordeal for both of us. Which was surprising and incomprehensible.
As for Andrei's sense of humor, his originality sometimes went off scale. At the college he entered after high school, the nickname Surprise stuck to him for his unexpected extravagant antics. He also made his mark on my twentieth birthday. We sat in the company of friends and younger relatives, apart from the rest, locked ourselves in my room. Being a teetotaler myself, I served alcohol to my guests. Andrei got drunk and made a toast, in which he wished me not to live to the age of twenty-one. The whole company was somewhat shocked by this toast, but I liked it. At least it was not banal. What he wished me on my next birthday, I won't even risk telling you.
He was a good painter and a good photographer. Now the two of us were fiddling with photography equipment. Then a curious incident happened. Andrei once copied photos of actors by laying them out on the floor of his house. The result turned out to be useless on its own at that time, but when we developed the film and printed the pictures, we saw something strange on them. Energy discharges, something like branching lightning, each of which came out of a small luminous spot, as if bursting from some other space. They were invisible to the eye, but the film captured them. We wondered what it could be, showed the pictures to different people. Some thought it was a defect in the film or glare on the camera lens. Well, it could be anything... However, in our opinion, neither of them looked like strange lightning. Later we saw in one of the newspapers, devoted to anomalous phenomena, photos with exactly the same discharges. The person who sent them asked for help to figure out what it was. No one could answer him with anything intelligible. And to this day we don't know what it was either. Whether it was nothing, or whether it was something unusual.
...At the same time as everything described above, my search for myself took place. A brief period of boredom passed, but uncertainty remained. Time passed, and I still did not know what to put myself to. The thirst for useful activities grew stronger. I really wanted to be the right part of the world, and not just a dependant sitting on its neck. Such thoughts did not just visit me: they never left me. No matter what I did, they were present as a background, disturbing and painfully burning.
As a result of long and thorough reflection, I came to the idea that writing could be an occupation that was accessible to me both physically and intellectually, and also interesting and perhaps even profitable. There was no confidence in success or in my abilities in general. But why not try? In my childhood I amused myself with it, now I will try my powers seriously.
Since I read mainly fiction and fantasy at that time, it was in these genres that I began my trials of the pen.
I approached the case with all the thoroughness of which I was capable. Made sketches of several short science fiction stories, worked on them. I wasn't satisfied with the result. And I didn't really like short stories, even as a reader. I liked big works much better. So I started a science fiction novel. Is it possible to say that I presumptuously swung at a big shape? I suppose not. After all, I didn't expect to get it right away. It was just more interesting. I wrote part of the book, and again I wasn't satisfied with the results. Perhaps the plot was unsuccessful? Tried another one. Wrong again. Tried writing fantasy. Again failed.
Not being confident in my writing abilities and not wanting to look like a talentless paper-maker in anyone's — including my own — eyes, I was extremely discerning about my creative endeavours and rejected everything I wrote. Deciding to try something simpler (at least it seemed easier), I tried to write a horror story, then a novel. Failed again. In what I could do — or, more precisely, could not do — I did not like either the plots, or the style, or the dynamics of the narrative, or even the verbal palette. Naturally, I never showed anything to anyone. For all the time, I only read out to my cousins one finished story written in the style of H. P. Lovecraft. They liked it. I didn't.
Having considered such an uninspiring picture of my literary trials, I assumed that either I am not ready to become a writer yet, simply not matured, or I lack the talent — and if the latter is true, then there is no point in venturing into the unattainable. However, I could not decide unequivocally whether the first assumption was true or the second. I continued my endeavours for some time, believing that a much longer exercise was necessary for a definite conclusion. Then I stopped, telling myself that in case of anything it would never be too late to return to them.
During these exersises, I wrote quite a lot in ink. I just wanted to. At first I used iron nib pens, which were completely out of use by that time, but were still sold in some paper shops. Then — ink fountain pens. And then Vitalik, at my request, brought from the village a bundle of real quills, taken from a goose that had gone into the pot. A miniature glass jar, very similar to it, was adapted for the inkwell. What a pleasure it was to write in ink, with real goose quills! There was something special, hard to explain, almost sacred to me. The people around me did not understand. They said: "Victor is showing off his originality." Of course, I could hardly be understood without knowing the sensations I knew. Why should a modern person, who has at his or her disposal a whole arsenal of various writing implements, torture himself or herself with sharpening pens and daily washing ink stains off his fingers? Because. What I regretted at the time was not being able to get real parchment paper.
Just on the period of my creative endeavours came those few months when in our flat there was a so-called poltergeist.
Even before that, for several years we heard a knock on the wall, from somewhere below. We are on the ground floor, and the basement below us is almost never used by any of the tenants. We were not the only ones who heard the knocking; it was transmitted along the wall and to other apartments. It happened mostly in the evenings and at night. The knocking rhythms were constantly changing. For example, three strong strikes, two weak, one strong. Or two weak, strong, weak. Or a weak one and two strong ones. Or something else. Different every night. The neighbors thought we were knocking. Once they were sure we weren't involved, they thought it was someone in the basement. But nothing was found there. But the knocking was heard there, too, — in the wall, from somewhere under the foundation. Everyone was at a loss to guess. Someone remembered that there used to be a private house with three graves near it. They began to say that dead people were knocking. But what dead people are there?.. If there were any, the remains were taken out with the earth when they dug the excavation when building our house. However, no one had any other versions. I did not believe in dead people, but I gladly frightened my cousins with them.
And at some point, our chairs began to turn over by themselves. No one is in the common room — suddenly there is a rumble. Mum or father goes to look — the chair is upside down. Sometimes at the same time as the sound of falling, our dog Mickey would run away in a panic and scramble somewhere. He himself, a small indoor dog, could not turn over the weighty chair. Then the dishes in the kitchen began to rattle. It wasn't flying or crashing, as poltergeists tend to do, but it made a lot of noise. It got worse. We often heard someone walking down the empty hallway. There were footsteps, creaking floor under someone's feet, heavy breathing, sometimes even coughing.
These phenomena were witnessed not only by our family, but also by relatives and neighbours who came to visit. What was happening made everyone very tense, and only I liked it very much. The anomalous phenomena I had read so much about were now happening right in front of my eyes — what a luck! As if sensing this attitude on my part, the poltergeist, or whatever it was, made a closer acquaintance with me. I was already fond of writing at night. And so I used to sit at my desk at night, with my back to the door, and work on my fantastic opuses. My parents are asleep in the other room. Then a mysterious invisible man starts wandering down the hallway — I can hear him. Then he enters my room, comes close and puts his hand on my shoulder. As he does so, he seems to lean over my shoulder, peering into the manuscript; I can hear his breath near my ear. And out of the corner of my eye I see that no one is there. After standing like that for a few minutes, he walks away. It was very creepy the first few times. Then I got used to it, and even began to say hello to the night visitor.
A couple of times, in the morning twilight, I woke up to someone pressing down on my chest so hard that my ribs seemed to crack. I choked, opened my eyes — there was no one, but the monstrous heaviness did not disappear. Fortunately, I had read about such cases before, and I knew roughly what to do. So I managed to cope with this something or someone. I don't think it was my overnight visitor.
There was a lot of stuff going on. The crown of strange phenomena was a strange creature peeking through the door of my room. It happened during the day, and always in the presence of several people. For example, we are sitting with my mother, Aunt and cousins, and we see something from the hallway into the room, — a whitish, about a metre tall. It could only be observed with lateral vision. As soon as one of us turned his head, it quickly hid behind the doorpost. The cousins trembled with fear. If anyone decided to go out into the hallway, there was no one there.
It all ended when the posters were removed and the photos were ripped off the wall. The dishes rang a little more for a few days, but then this stopped. Then we noticed that there was no more knocking on the wall. True, there was something that lasted for a long time, several years. A ticking sound coming from under the window sill in my room. When I tell anyone about it, they always tell me that it must have been a woodworm bug. I probably would have thought so myself if it couldn't be communicated with. Have you ever heard of a bug that you ask "Tick please" and it starts ticking, and then you ask "Stop please" and it stops? Me, Andrei and others have done this many times, sometimes talking to it for hours like this — and it responds. I do not know what it was. Nor do I know what my posters had in common with the poltergeist. My grandmother explained what happened in the simplest way: "He took the devils off the walls, so the devilry stopped." It meant posters and shots from horror films.
The posters were sold. My mother and I once thought, why don't we trade? To be out in the fresh air and among people. Moreover, there was a good place near a shop in one of the neighbouring streets. There were amateur traders selling everything from seeds, potatoes and corn to clothes, shampoo and batteries. We'd come in and lay out our wares too. Our stall was the richest and most interesting. Posters, books that we considered superfluous in our home library, stamps (I decided to sell my collection at that time), diafilms (there was no one to watch them anymore), bagged medicinal plants that my mother collected herself, and so on and so forth. We went there during the summer, from time to time, sat there for a few hours, and always came back with some proceeds, which helped the family budget.
It was an interesting experience. I watched how others traded. Some were very amusing. In our mini-market with a dozen "stalls" where goods were spread out on newspapers, a lot of things happened. There were conflicts between traders. Sometimes there were fights between drunken visitors to the shop and the police arrived. A few metres away from us sat, with his back against the wall, a beggarly old man with paralysed legs. He was collecting alms, though, as it turned out later, for booze. One day a group of boys nearly stole several sets of my stamps. Mum caught the thieves in time and literally shook the stolen goods out of them. Another time a girl came up to us, slipped a banknote under one of the books, and muttering something like, "I'm not taking anything", rushed off. "Hey!", I shouted after her, but she was already far away.
Unlike those who earn such a trade, we had fun in this way, it was interesting — it was new for us — we spent time. And the memories remained, in general, positive.
Meanwhile, the search for myself continued. When it turned out that I was not ready to write, the question arose with a new urgency: what can I do at all? Physical labor was excluded. Writing, it turns out, too. What's left? No, really, what?..
Heavy thinking began again. Then one day an idea occurred to me that was highly unusual and strange to me. I thought I might take up magic.
The most interesting thing is the fact that I have always been an atheist and a supporter of a strictly scientific view of the world since my childhood. I did not believe in God, nor in evil power, nor in magic, nor in the afterlife. My unspoken motto has always been "Science can do anything". And now I suddenly found myself convinced of the existence of some other world, and of the efficacy of magic as a means of interacting with it. I now realise that this was the beginning of the awakening of the knowledge I had acquired during my time in the second world, between my past life and the present one. It is also noteworthy that, although it was strange, I was not at all surprised at the sudden change in my views. On the contrary: I approached the new idea from a practical point of view. I thought, "Well, if I can't act physically to achieve something in life, I'll act through magic." And although magic also required certain physical manipulations, as well as accessories that I had no place to get, I was somehow sure that I could do just fine without them. Apparently, this confidence had the same source as the confidence in the existence of the invisible world and the reality of magic.
I began to collect information in various ways, began to buy literature of occult and magical subjects. Fortunately, just at that time (we are talking about the first half of the 90's), there was a certain excitement in the society connected with such things, and such books were published more and more. Of course, it was difficult to assume that something could really be learnt from them. Even the annotations sometimes explicitly stated that the magic recipes and other information contained deliberate distortions, so that the successful application of all this in practice would not lead to dire consequences. On the one hand, such caution is understandable. On the other hand, there was a certain coquetry of the publishers. Although it was insignificant for me. I only needed to understand only the general picture and the general principles of magical techniques. For the methods that I intended to use, the details of the rituals did not matter.
Having thoroughly read the available material, I tried them out in practice. I will not tell you what the point was; the main thing was that they worked. The knowledge that surfaced from the depths of my memory (which, however, I was not aware of at the time) successfully replaced my traditional magical tools.
I don't know where my witchcraft would have led me over time. Nothing good, I should think. That is what my Teacher later said about it. Fortunately, I took up magic when I was only about a year and a half away from a major turning point in my life, and by that time I had not managed to do anything terrible. Though I had no intention of committing atrocities, it seemed like it could have happened one way or another. Or it was even inevitable. So my thoroughness played a positive role here. After all, before trying to do something, I, as usual, meticulously studied the material, — which took most of the time. I started to try little by little, taking my time and not trying to do something significant at once. So I just didn't have time to get really bogged down in all this.
When I speak of a major turning point, I mean the beginning of the revelation. But something else happened before that.
One day I suddenly felt sick. One night, actually. I lay down and was preparing to sleep, when suddenly there was an unpleasant sensation in my whole body, then in my heart. It was as if it began to tremble and stop, then it stopped for a moment, and then it exploded, pounding frantically against my chest. Weakness spread throughout my body, and my consciousness almost shut down. The semi-fainting state lasted a few seconds; then I lay there with a twitching heart, trying to catch my breath. Every vein in my body seemed to rattle. I thought I was on the verge of death, and I was very frightened. I hardly slept that night, and the next day I felt sick. But I preferred not to say anything to anyone. A few weeks later it happened again, again at night. And then again. During the third attack I felt so bad that I called my mum and asked her to call an ambulance.
The doctors came and gave me a shot. They said I had tachycardia. I asked is there a way to treat it, and was told: no way. All we can do is try to prevent the attacks. All they could advise me was to swallow a piece of dry bread or hold my breath when an attack approached.
I had to use the second method repeatedly, and it always worked. The attacks were actually managed to knock down on the approach, and they did not recur.
But I developed a fear of dying in my sleep. I only felt sick at night — and now I was afraid to go to bed. If my grandmother, for example, dreamed of dying in her sleep, saying, "I went to bed, fell asleep and did not wake up, — how good! No suffering!", then such a prospect did not please me at all.
Now, as a few years ago, every day was a torture for me, because evening was approaching. And every evening was like a death sentence. I thought about it all day long, and when I went to bed I said goodbye to life. When I woke up, I was surprised that I was still alive, and everything started all over again. When I watched one of my favourite films, I thought: "This is the last time. I'll never see it again." When someone came to see me, I thought: "This is the last time. I'll never see them again." And it's the same with everything else: going for a walk for the last time, reading a book for the last time, smoking my last cigarette... I quit smoking around that time, by the way. But not because of heart problems. On the contrary: when I smoked, I felt a little better, cigarettes calmed me down.
Month after month passed. The fear kept growing. I was exhausted from fighting it, and I could no longer hide it successfully. My mother began to notice that in the evening I was sitting pale and sleepy, and that my teeth were tapping at times. She began to wonder what was the matter. I didn't tell her the whole truth. She never found out that I was preparing to die every night, but she realised that I had some kind of anxiety that exhausted me and preventing me from sleeping properly. And she easily connected it with my attacks, because she remembered the ambulance call, and from time to time I asked for Validol or other heart pills. Deciding to use a sedative, she began to give me valerian, either in drops or in tablets. I took it for a long time, but I did not feel any relief. Then they called a doctor, who prescribed a stronger sedative. The result was the same. That is, almost zero. So we bought an even stronger sedative ourselves. It worked well, but not for long: as soon as the effect of the pill was over, the fear came upon me with the same force.
We called the doctor again, and he prescribed light tranquillisers. They had a strange effect. I felt as if I were separated from reality. Here I am — and here, separately, life goes on. I'm saying and doing things, but I feel like I'm watching from the outside. Did the medication help? Not really. The fear was still there, but it was like it was outside of me. Or I was outside of it. The effects of the drug caused enormous psychological discomfort. When it wore off, the fear returned in full force. And I didn't know which was worse, the fear or the treatment.
It was obvious that a new drug was needed. And that's when I thought about it. At that point, I had been suffering for several years. There was no end in sight. I asked myself: what next? Use stronger tranquilisers? And then something even stronger? And then another, and another? It became clear: if I went any further, I would never get out. I knew several examples of people I knew personally or through someone else who had treated their anxiety with stronger and stronger drugs, then ended up in a mental hospital, on disability and on pills for the rest of their lives. I didn't want that to happen. But that's exactly what I could have done if I'd taken the next step in that direction.
I decided not to. I refused to take any medication at all, telling myself: whatever happens, happens.
I began to fight fear through sheer force of will. I forbade myself to be afraid. I convinced myself that the fears were groundless — why did I even think that I would die? Moreover, the attacks have not been repeated for a long time. I drove fear out of my thoughts, pushed it away, tried to distract myself, to think of something pleasant. I did what I could. I uprooted the fear from my consciousness, pulling it out, straining all my mental strength. And I ripped it out. Even sooner than you'd expect. Although I didn't really expect it, to be honest. It was just another battle for survival. It was exhausting, every minute, day and night, and lasted something like three weeks, and then the fear went away. For good this time. It never came back again.
When I realised the victory, I was very surprised. Not only that I had managed to drive away the fear, but also at my own abilities. How much, it turns out, a person can do, if necessary...
However, at that time I was already able to explain and justify it to myself, because the won battle took place after the revelation. I already had knowledge that allowed me to understand a lot. I was becoming a different person. And my inner life was completely different now.
Would I have won under different circumstances? I don't know. I'm not sure.
Last updated
