"You did dishonestly with you"

Tanya is 23 years old. Six years ago, her father committed suicide. For a long time, the girl could not talk to anyone about it. But now Tanya is ready to tell her story. She wrote about this to the editorial office of "such cases." We talked with the girl and publish her monologue about what is happening with the child, whose parent committed suicide how to survive the loss, how to get rid of guilt pursuing feelings and finally forgive

I was born and grew up in a small village in the north of Russia. She lived in a full and very prosperous family by Russian standards. I was 16 when my father shot himself.

My sister and I were at home when mother called. “Dad is in the hospital,” she said. It sounded not at all scary, and I did not attach any importance to this. I even called him the next day, but the phone was turned off.

For another week he was lying in intensive care. At this time, relatives came home, talked about something in the kitchen with their mother. They went out with an expression of confusion on their faces.

It seems to me that I knew what happened, but I don’t remember where. As if she had overheard someone else's conversation - no one said anything to me directly. I heard that he and his mother quarreled very much that day. He took out a gun, his mother screamed to shoot at her. Father shot himself, he was taken to the hospital unconscious, he was still alive.

Somewhere on the periphery of consciousness, I already knew that he would die, and if he survives, he would be bad. I loved my father and did not wish him this.

On the day of his death, I was at school. Classmates condolenced me, SMS came to the phone from former classmates with words of support. At first I thought that they only now learned that dad was in the hospital. It turned out that he died in the early morning, and by noon the whole small village was already in the know.

After school and tutor, I returned home. Mother said to sit on the bed, she wanted to talk to me. I tried not to cry. Now I understand that, probably, for some time everything has gone to suicide. Mother cheated on her father. Everyone guessed about it, but did not talk. I still do not know how much it continued - several years or months.

Shortly before what happened, my dad and I dinner and he said: “I know that your mother is cheating on me” - and asked what to do.

I did not answer anything intelligible. I was scared. My mother’s lies fell on my shoulders. My teenage problems - persecution at school, a feeling of abandonment and the lack of friends - was aggravated by my family.

Mother tried to tell what happened. But we were never so close that I cried on her shoulder. In addition, I could not tell her: "He did it because you cheated on him and wanted to leave." And she did not consider it necessary to report to a sixteen -year -old girl. The pain overwhelmed me against my will, so I went to another room and closed the door. She sat down at the piano and began to play the recently learned soundtrack from the film "Requiem by Dream."

In the following days, messages with condolences continued to come. After one of them, I threw the phone against the wall, the back panel and battery scattered in different directions. I did not go to school and spent days in the network with anonymous, because only I could tell them a terrible truth about my family. Relatives were preparing for the funeral. I flatly refused to go to them.

It was scary when my grandmother called and cried into the phone. I asked to come. But I already made a decision: I want to remember him alive. This thought was the only clear, I clung to it, as for a lifebuoy.

Dreams began to dream of me. I still remember one of them. Dad descends from the stairs to our door. Under his arm, he holds newspapers and says: “Dad is real. He is not forever. I'm just not talking yet. " And leaves the entrance. I fall to my knees and sob.

After a few days of recluse, I returned to school. I wanted to go to the school psychologist, but she was on a business trip. I put off sorrow for later. And she creeped deeper, eating my dreams through, cut me off from the real world in pieces.

Relations with the mother became more and more stretched, we cursed every day on far -fetched occasions. Just then the word "mother" disappeared from my speech for good. At first I called her by name and patronymic, then, probably, I felt sorry for her - my mother or mother seemed to me quite appropriate options, they did not have the tenderness and love that the word “mother” for me did not have.

On the ninth day after the funeral, I was forced to go to the grave. I persuaded myself not to cry. But, finding himself in the cemetery, looking at the hastily tapered cross, to which they nailed a portrait of my father from a wedding photograph, I could not hold back tears. I began to look at other people's tombstones, calculated how many years strangers lived.

I was angry with them for their long lives.

I was angry with the cross, because my father did not believe in God.

I was angry with my grandmother, because she fell on the grave and began to lament. She could do this, but I did not.

When we were already leaving the cemetery, I ran with all my feet to this damn cross and, touching it, made a promise to live a good life and take care of my sister. There was a feeling that it was right. I definitely knew that he loved us, and now I have to take care of both of us. Because I'm the eldest. Because he would like it.

Then I painted in bright blue-one of the first in the city. She left for St. Petersburg for the holidays. She often disappeared from friends, drink and smoke. Once I timidly tried to tell my friend about what happened. He missed it by his ears. This was my last attempt to tell about what happened in many years.

After school, I entered the university and left for Petersburg.

Questions about myself, my feelings and feelings of others, I was looking for answers in books were brewing in me. She swallowed all the books that were in my hands. I read Lermontov and Brodsky, Mayakovsky and Yesenin, taught them by heart. On the Internet I read Polozkov and other “fashionable” poets of those years.

And then I stumbled upon the plays of Sartre. “Flies” and “behind closed doors”. I was split in two. The all -consuming despair, which has already become my life, suddenly became obvious. In words and images, I recognized my pain, my helplessness.

Illustration: Lena Bulai for TD

I wrapped myself through fiction and looked for something that happened to me. Salinger, Kafka, Camus, Jean, Arthur Rimbao and Jack London - they turned out to be my only connection with that part of me that broke away after the death of my father. They knew that I felt, they protected me with greater pain.

In my second year, I had pairs on philosophy, we talked about them about Sartre. After one of the classes, I went to the teacher and timidly, feeling that I was about to pay, asked what to read on the topic of suicide. She advised Yukio Misimu and Georges Batay.

The death in their books was comprehensive and omnipotent. After reading several works of Mishima, I got angry with my father.

I dawned on me! He stole my death. The time before his suicide was difficult, I carried the thought of suicide silently and undividedly. It was my death, and he took it. I transferred my pain to my shoulders, and I no longer endured this severity.

Then I started problems with food behavior. At that time, I ate half a cucumber per day, but I still saw exclusively ugliness in the reflection. I wanted me not to be at all.

And at the same time, I convinced everyone that it was a healthy diet. I just care about myself. In fact, I killed myself.

Daria Serenko: This article will not change anything

At some point it became obvious: this is the end. Any of my relationship crumbled, while I portrayed my own mercy and even believed myself. This was replaced by periods of complete isolation and injuries. I cut myself almost every week: first hands - now I know, I wanted my pain to become noticeable. Then - legs. I beat myself to bruises. Freeded and lost weight again.

In my third year, I went to a free psychologist, who was offered by the LGBT group, did not plan to talk about what had happened to my father, I wanted to discuss relations with my girlfriend. Sitting in a chair in front of a psychologist, I said: "I do not think that you will help me." And she suddenly told everything.

For the first time since the age of sixteen, I cried about dad. About his death. For the first time I was angry at my mother and did not swallow this rot. For the first time in a few years, I felt at least something different from pain.

And then the psychologist began to speak. After the words "you are not to blame," I began to sob. The idea that I was a child and could not do anything came to my mind.

- You acted dishonestly with you, losing your responsibility.

And I cry again. About his lost childhood, about himself.

I went to the psychologist for another six months regularly, for several years - periodically. Having moved from St. Petersburg, I changed the psychologist to a psychotherapist.

Now I am 23 years old.

I can talk about the death of dad. I can grieve on it and continue to do it. Recently, I talked about his death with my sister and realized: I have never been alone.

Part of it will always be in me. Everything that was once my dad, somewhere around me. The energy of his body did not disappear without a trace, it is physics. I came up with: he became everyone. Sometimes I am looking for the color of his eyes at passers -by, from the city to the city I carry his sweater and a pendant that I bought when he was still alive.

I miss him. And finally I can admit it.

My dad was called Oleg. He stunningly told unbearable jokes, loved history and was on the “locomotive”. And I remember him alive.