I'm afraid of you, Life
Nadia did not manage to hide, to run away from fear. At every new crossroads in life, he made more and more terrible grimaces and turned into a panic attack on one sunny vacation day. The agonizing "I'm afraid of you, life!" and the happy "I love you, life!" - these are two different fates …
Outside the window of the hotel room, the sun slid over the horizon. Its round hot sides plunged into the blue coolness of the sea. The golden fire wearily contemplated its reflection in the water, and with a quiet sigh it died to be born again tomorrow.
And on this side of the glass Nadia was dying. A month ago she turned forty. She could shine as much as the sun. But the sky of her fate has long been clouded with clouds. And not that continuous natural disasters, although such happened, but more gray slurry, cold and thick.
***
Nadya grew up alone. The family could not pull the sisters-brothers. On thirty square meters, besides the girl, five more adults nested, regularly spewing thunder and lightning at each other. Parents, grandparents and a lonely uncle who adored physics and hated the whole world.
Adults had no time to take care of the child, they had to survive - work, feed, endure. There were no birds of happiness singing in the house, no laughter sounded. Pain lived there. Many-faced and prickly. Each has its own.
The morning began with a queue for the restroom, hustling in the kitchen and the usual squabbles. Everyone was in a hurry, ran into one another, freaked out. Nadia was awakened at the last moment so that she would not get underfoot. She didn't want to wake up. Sleep was a salvation, an escape from the cataclysm called life.
But in the evenings she could not sleep. The dark room seemed to her the end of the world, a nightmare and hopelessness. And although the TV was shouting behind the wall and the adults were humming, the girl felt completely defenseless.
People with a visual vector have the richest imagination, are able to give birth to brilliant works of art in the real world or incredible monsters in their own heads.
Either someone was breathing just above her ear, which was tickling on the cheek, or the empty parental bed creaked a half meter from her head. A minute later, the door of the old cabinet opened by itself. The small body was covered with perspiration, the heart was beating with a drumbeat, its beat reflected from the walls and filled the whole room. Open eyes? Never! Then all those who hide in the dark will understand that she is not sleeping. And then…
- Mother! - the voice broke into a wheeze. - Sit with me! I'm scared!
- Well, what again? There is no one there. Sleep!
Oh no! Now that she betrayed herself, being here alone is ruin.
- Mother! Mother! Hurry! - if only she came, if only she could.
- What a shame! Big girl already. Five years. And she herself does not fall asleep, - disappointment sounded in my mother's voice. It scratched at the soul. But what is this pain compared to what is now not scary! It will hurt later, in decades. Fear will not go away, he will move from a small dark room to Nadina's life as a master. And the vulnerable soul, which has not found understanding and support, bound by horror, like a crust of ice, will remain skinny and cold.
In the morning, mom dressed her sleeping daughter right in bed to save time and nerves. Because as soon as Nadya opened her eyes, a cry would start: “I won't go to the kindergarten! Mommy please! Don't give me away! Mother!"
Under these screams, teeth were brushed and braids were woven. They accompanied the road to hell. I mean, into the garden. Under them, the child was torn away from the mother and carried away to the group. Sometimes with a button from Mom's coat, sometimes with a tuft of her hair.
My daughter's scream of reproach rang all day in my mother's head. After work, the woman ran first to the store to buy groceries, and only then to the garden.
The morning parting with my mother was tantamount to death. But when she came for Nadya in the evening, the girl was in no hurry to go home. How good it was to sit on the floor and play with the doll, knowing that mom was waiting. That now she will not go anywhere, even banging pots into the kitchen. And for five minutes he will sit on a tiny chair, holding full bags. Then he sighs, shrugs his shoulders and begins to rush her daughter.
Nadya didn't want to go home. No one had time for her there.
Loneliness is insidious and painful. And for people with a visual vector, it is simply deadly. It consistently lowers the temperature of the soul, indifferently extinguishing every spark of love that is ready to flare up at the slightest response. Loneliness goes with fear. Only love is capable of making a heart brave, making it knock for others, forgetting about itself, not just about fear.
But Nadia was alone. One among the adults busy with themselves and their problems, one on the playground and in the kindergarten. And fear multiplied and multiplied, put on different masks, crawled out of all the cracks. She was no longer afraid only of the darkness of the night with its dangers and terrible monsters, which the imagination gave birth to, but could not distinguish a keen eye, but also of daylight, in which uselessness, emptiness and alienation were clearly visible.
She felt like a blade of grass. Weak and fragile. Lost in a vast world full of threats
A child with a visual vector develops through sensory connections with other people. If the baby grows up in warmth and care of the heart, feels the reliable shoulder of his parents, he learns to trust the world, his mental strength grows stronger.
Nadia did not feel this saving connection with her loved ones. She wanted to catch on to something, cuddle up, warm her soul, create this connection with at least someone.
The girl asked me to buy her a pet. But the housing situation allowed only a can of fish. The fish refused to live in captivity and died one after another, each time tearing off a piece from the child's heart.
Then there was a handsome parrot with a blue tail. He was released through the window by Nadine's uncle because the miracle bird woke him up with the first rays of the sun with its unbearably joyful cry. Nadya spent many weeks at the window, looking out among the snow-covered branches Gosha's blue tail. “He's there alone. He is cold and scared. Like me.
Once Nadya picked up a kitten on the street. He was fluffy and warm, greedily lapping milk from a saucer and meowing plaintively. At first, Mom even softened, agreed to leave him for a while and carried him to bathe in a basin. But, seeing the fleas swarming on the wet, trembling skin, she disgustedly wrapped the baby in a towel and carried it into the entrance. "The house is big, someone will pick it up."
Nadya's heart was breaking with pain. Fear took up more and more space in him. How to live if life itself is worthless. No one stands up for the small and weak. There is danger everywhere.
When Nadya was ten, a classmate offered her one of the puppies of her snow-white lapdog. The girl begged and cried, promised to feed and walk the dog, study well and obey her parents unquestioningly.
The puppy lasted a little over a month with them. And that was the happiest time for Nadia. She did not let go of him, caressed and stroked, talked to him, trusted her secrets, laughed and cried, buried in fluffy fur.
He was still too young, he didn’t ask for help and was spoiling all over the apartment. During the day, Nadya ran after him with a rag, immediately washing away the traces of a simple crime. At night, the dog was locked in the kitchen. And in the morning the adults, who woke up before Nadia, sleepily entered the piles and puddles, shouted, swore and beat the "stupid cattle."
On one of the short December Saturdays, while Nadia was with a neighbor, the parents took the puppy for a walk, took him to another area and left him in a strange cold yard, and the daughter was told that the dog had run away.
Tears were replaced by hysterics. Then there was an ominous silence. Emotions seemed to run out, dried up. Warm flashes in the soul went out, permafrost set in. In this cold, only fear survived. He, like the Snow Queen, ruled in Nadia's heart, in every moment, in every thought.
Nadia grew bigger, and her life, on the contrary, seemed to shrink, curl up, become cramped and musty. In Nadia's everyday life there was no joy from communication, there was no intimacy and warmth - everything that revives a person's soul with a visual vector, fills with sensual meaning. There was only fear. Fear for yourself, for your life. He supplanted everything. There is no room in the heart for other emotions.
Nadya did not like people, she was afraid of them. Raising your hand in class, asking what time it is or who is on the last line, passing a change for a ticket on the bus meant drawing attention to yourself, giving yourself away. Scary! To become attached to someone, to make friends - was like becoming vulnerable and defenseless, putting yourself in danger. It's doubly scary.
***
Nadia grew up, became a beauty, but even that weighed her down, because it made her noticeable. She seemed to be hiding from life, and fear created a thick shadow over her with a reliable wing.
Relationships with men did not work out. Next to the bright, sensual, interesting, she became transparent and invisible. But dubious moths flocked to the tart smell of her fear, and each time they only confirmed the fears, disappointed, caused pain.
Fear distorts a person's natural desire to love and be loved into a painful desire for spiritual comfort at the expense of another.
Whereas love is an action, a movement of the soul towards a loved one. This is an effort over oneself, the ability to open one's heart, to forget about oneself, a desire to make one's chosen one happy. And this power works wonders - caring about the other displaces thoughts about oneself, and with them fear.
Nadia did not manage to hide, to run away from fear. At every new crossroads in life, he made more and more terrible grimaces and turned into a panic attack on one sunny vacation day.
This time, Nadia climbed far into fabulous Thailand, hoping to recharge with solar energy and dispel gloomy thoughts. But this fragile hope died on the very first evening - with the last rays of sunset it was swallowed up by the black ocean. And at the same time, in a luxurious hotel room, alone on a huge bed, Nadezhda herself was dying. So it seemed to her. After all, the feeling of a panic attack was not much different from the agony of death. Who knows will understand.
Fear in the visual vector is always the fear of death. Or life - after all, people die from it. It depends on how you look at it.
But there is another angle: to face fear, get to the bottom of it and make a choice. The agonizing "I'm afraid of you, life!" and the happy "I love you, life!" are two different fates. But there is only one step between them.
