A former teenager’s story. Ch. 1-4

CHAPTER 1

One of the most essential prerequisites for personal happiness is being loved. So, an average person’s life is envisaged to be filled with love during each period. As a child you get love from your parents, then friends and sexual partners, then your own kids and grandkids. You are lucky if your chain of love never breaks, but runs a straight line from birth to death. But it doesn’t always work that way. Not that often, to put it mildly. And, unfortunately, not to everyone.

Where do the terms of “teenage crisis”, “mid-life crisis”, “late-life crisis” come from? All those crises are no more than the broken links of the chain of love for the person. During those periods nobody loves you – that’s where the crisis comes from. In old age it is explicable: your significant other has long been in the grave, your children and grandchildren have grown up and got lives of their own, and the feeble, unkempt old man or woman with a number of illnesses feels like a mere millstone around their neck. Everybody secretly wishes you dead. You can feel it and it consequently makes you cranky and irritable.

What about the mid-life crisis? Same: the kids have grown up and gone, your spouse has no feelings for you anymore, and grandchildren supposed to come and take the baton of love are not there yet. And so the person gets devoured by depression and the feeling of devastation and loss of meaning in life.

But, perhaps, the most painful, heartbreaking, crushing period of a human’s life, the period leaving untreatable scars in your heart and soul forever is the crisis of adolescence that starts at the age of eleven and ends after seventeen or eighteen – or never in the worst-case scenario. It is the age when your parents and family no longer love you (at least not the way they used to when you were a sweet little baby, not yet a gangly, pimply teen), and people of the opposite gender don’t love you yet either. That is why it is so important to have friends when you are a teenager, and it also explains your longing for gathering in groups in order to just fill that gap. And if, for all that, you get rejected by your peers as well, all that remains for you is to soap a rope and hang yourself on it. That’s what some people do. But, as for doing it you need courage which not everybody has, most people just break, bottle it up inside, become something like “the man in a case” – or, put simply, computer wonks, and sometimes they stay hiding in their shell until they die. Modern virtual reality contributes to it perfectly well. The Internet and its social networks, forums, dating sites and so on give us an illusion of life. Even if in real life you are a musty sad sack, on FB you can always have a big list of virtual friends, liking the fake photoshopped pictures of the virtual you, and on Tinder you can always find him or her pissing in your ear about their virtual feelings for you but they will sure make a wry face on seeing you in person and, citing exhaustion, beat a hasty retreat after a forty minutes’ interaction.

Take, for instance, one average apartment building and view it in cross-section, and in three of each five flats you will definitely find a sad wanker, male or female, sitting at a computer with a hunched back inside of a messy, untidy, stuffy room.

Now let me introduce myself. I am one of them, female, even though I am over thirty. Yeah, I am one of those lonely sad losers slouching in front of a computer I described above. Nobody remembers my real name, but it doesn’t matter for I’ve been living under an assumed one for over a third of my life.

What made me take a different name once I reached my adulthood? The answer is simple: my teenage insecurities flourished in the most fertile ground. Back then I believed that having changed my name and my surroundings I’d immediately become a new person and solve all my problems with that. And I did, partly. But in the end I got back to square one. So the registry office lady had been trying to talk me out of it quite needlessly; there was no use in her repeating that changing your name you take another person’s destiny. I was ready to take any other destiny but my own, totally unaware that a man’s destiny is his personality and his habits, not his name, surname or location. My personality and my habits were way harder to change.

Ok, let’s not put the cart before the horse.

CHAPTER 2

The crisis of adolescence had really knocked me down. Even though there was no serious tragedy in my life, such as my parents’ death or a car crash with a bad injury and subsequent disability which some people of little brain like to show off in real life, and some other make books and movies out of. I nevertheless felt very unhappy. Life sucked, and I would find heaps of reasons for it. Other people’s happiness and well-being would enrage me and plunge me into severe depression. I couldn’t stand it when somebody else’s life was more successful and colorful than mine. At such moments I hated and resented the whole world, and I would vent my anger on everything that was unlucky to come to my hand.

It was the end of 1997 when the film Titanic with DiCaprio in the title role was first screened in Russia. I was in the seventh grade, and after seeing that movie all the girls in my school would cry buckets and drool over “Cutie Leo” as they used to call him.

Of course, I didn’t go out to see the movie. Besides, I didn’t have the money for that. My family had never had money for anything, and it subsequently gave me a poverty mentality forever. It has made me a sheer cheapskate watching every penny. The seeds of my future cheapness had already been planted, when I, a girl of twelve, skimped on the cinema ticket and decided to just wait for the movie to air so I could watch it for free and form an opinion of my own about the blockbuster that had taken my fellow schoolgirls’ breaths away back those days.

As is the custom, “Titanic” came out on TV almost a year late, when the main wave of Leo’s fans had subsided and the teenage girls’ excitement over him had decreased by a factor of three.

I can’t remember what exactly month it was, November or February. It was one of the dullest winter months, dark and gloomy, for the Chrismtas with its lights and tinsel was either over or not there yet. There was nothing much to wait for, and I was hibernating like a bear in his den. One of those dismal days I sat in front of the TV watching the acclaimed film Titanic.

Honestly, I didn’t fall in love with Leo even though the age of thirteen is considered the most fanatic. I was pretty safe on this matter. Even at that age I was sceptic about it and I didn’t understand how it was possible to fall in love with a magazine picture or a movie character instead of a real person, and cherish hopes for anything between yourself and an international celebrity. Even the guy next door might never be available for such a peewee as I was, not to mention a Hollywood actor.

However, I watched the movie from start to finish. The plot was gripping and breathtaking except for a few drown-out scenes of the shipwreck which had taken almost two thirds of the storyline. But as soon as the film was over I felt so hopelessly bitter against my own life, so bleak and dreary like the dull winter day outside my window, totally eventless – in comparison with the heroes’ last day on the Titanic full of excitement and bright emotions. The rest of the evening I spent lying face to the wall on my sofa. The next morning I went to school in a foul mood.

The first lesson that day was Russian literature. As I recall we were analyzing Turgenev’s novella First love. The text of the composition, like everything else at school I had barely read, but the main character of the novella, Zinaida, who had managed to keep five gentlemen at once on their toes was making me feel jealous and miserable. What bugged me the most was the fact that Zinaida had been LOVED, but I wasn’t. That’s why, when the teacher asked me to tell about the “Turgenev’s girl” character, without thinking of the consequences I grunted:

“She’s a freaking idiot. Five men dance attendance to her, but no, she thinks none of them is good enough. Who the hell else does she need? Some other women can’t get a single man in their entire life.”

“Oh yeah, just like you” remarked the boy sitting next to me.

“Titov!” the teacher called him out reproachfully and addressed me:

“Why are you being so pessimistic, Andreeva?”

“I see no reason to be optimistic,” I muttered.

“Why not? You’ve got arms and legs, and living parents, have you not? You are a young girl of thirteen yet you sound like a cranky old woman.”

I sat down in silence. Having living parents and both my arms and legs was far from enough to make me feel happy.

 

CHAPTER 3

Regardless of the fact that I had an intact family, mom and dad, I wasn’t happy or content. I didn’t really love my dads for I thought them narrow-minded and unintelligent. The conclusion was based on comparing them to my friends’ parents – I had often visited their places and communicated with their families – and the comparison wasn’t kind to mine. Irina’s mom was twelve years younger than mine; Anastasia’s dad was a major diamond expert and a good provider while mine was a miserable couch potato not even willing to lift his a*se and make a dollar. Masha’s parents were intellectual philosophers discussing such topics as the origin of the Universe, while my old lowbrows had only two topics of conversation: “What we gonna eat tomorrow” and “When we gonna do renovation”. I was totally disrespectful to my dads – and I wasn’t hiding that.

Me falling in love as all teenage girls do exacerbated the situation. My crush was not an actor or a singer, but just a regular country guy. He was a neighbour of my relatives I was staying with for summer vacation. He bore the most ordinary name, too – Alexander, or Shurik as they called him. Still, that Shurik looked cute as hell and all the girls in the neighbourhood including my cousin Tanya were crazy about him, and the chances of something to develop between him and myself were close to zero. To me he was even less available than Tom Cruise.

But I was hoping, to no avail. Shurik didn’t know I was alive – I was no more than an empty spot for him. His indifference was riling me up; I bent over backwards to get his attention every way I could: I would sling chokeberries at his back, hide his shoes when he was visiting my cousin’s elder brother. Sure those childish attempts hadn’t worked out, they’d put Shurik off me for good. Not only was he ignoring me now, but avoiding me quite openly.

That wouldn’t stop me, though. As is well known it’s easier to stop a wild horse than a hopeless teenager in love. I continued my attemts to win his heart by all available means. Our four-year age difference felt like an irredeemable abyss to me; I believed that not my stupid behaviour but the age difference was the obstacle. And I wouldn’t give up the hope that two or three years later, when I was fifteen and he was nineteen the age gap between us would no longer matter.

And then, while I was so desperately hoping and suffering over my unrequited love, my silly dads cut in.

They popped up at the worst possible time. It was a May holiday, the weather was still freezing out there and the four of us were sitting on the bench wearing jackets – me, Tanya, her elder brother and Shurik. Shurik was tuning a guitar – the one that had been collecting dust in our loungeroom for years. Mom had last played on it before she married my dad, I suppose. She’d used to compose songs and lyrics and pick up chords. They sounded pretty nice, although somewhat primitive. Perhaps, those songs had helped her get my dad snowed. Despite her total illiteracy in the Russian language she had passion for words; she would make up poetry describing feelings she had never really experiensed. She had never truly loved my father and married him just for convenience; but the love she hadn’t felt for him had to be imitated – and so she’d imitated it with her author’s songs about spring and cherry blossoms, pure white snow and other attributes. Like a lace-making machine, doing its work authomatically, produces fabric of immense beauty, my mother would make the lacework of her author’s songs not putting one bit of her soul into what my naive dad had fallen for so gullibly. I inherited from her the poetic sensibility and schizophrenic perception of the world. From my father I got his laziness, gullibility and inner softness which ruined me afterwards. But that’s not the point right now.

So, Shurik was tuning the guitar I had stolen from my mother for Tanya. Tanya had said she wanted to learn playing the guitar and singing to it, but her parents wouldn’t buy it for her. While I had a quite useless guitar collecting dust on the wall, for even I didnt show any interest to it. So why not do some good? The more so, I had the twin advantages of getting rid of an unnecessary thing and making my cousin happy. When you make someone happy, you make it double for yourself. As the saying goes, giving is better than receiving.

I sat next to Shurik and was on cloud nine conscious of my own generousity. Even as Shurik casually remarked that the strings and tuning pegs were not very good and, in truth, they should have been replaced – it couldn’t lower my high spirits.

Having done with the tuning, Shurik started strumming some chords – unbelievably sweet and so painfully familiar (later on I found out that the sweetest, heavenly music he’d been playing then was taken from Musicola’s song – I Will Never Forget You).

And just like that, at the sweetest moment, so rare in my poor eventless teenagehood, my old buffoons came and put a damper on it.

CHAPTER 4

There they appeared, the two old idiots – one fat, bald and four-eyed, the other one still looking okay for her age, though, but wearing a poker face, dry and very unpleasant. Seeing her guitar in someone else’s hands, my mother gave me the stink eye.

“What’s your problem? Why are you staring at me?” I muttered in an unfriendly tone.

“I’ll talk to you later,” she hissed through her teeth.

But I got carried away and said to her:

“What the hell did you come for? No one wants you here, so come on, piss off now!”

Shurik gave me a contemptuous look but said nothing. He handed the guitar back to Tanya and left with the excuse of having things to do.

That very evening I was “put on trial”. Or, put simply, was attacked by the whole family, from my own parents to the other relatives – uncles, aunts, grandads and, most disturbingly, Uncle Anatole, Shurik’s father who was present in our house as well. Actually, he was the one who started the “trial”.

He was sitting at the table between my father and my uncle, discussing something, when I, wearing my bright-purple low-cut top picked especially for Shurik, sat down right opposite them.

“Who is this pretty young lady?” said Uncle Anatole as he noticed me.

I flushed.

“Do you really think I’m pretty? Your son doesn’t think so, though.”

“Doesn’t he?” he chuckled exchanging looks with my father.

“No,” said I, “And it’s totally wrong of him. If you must know I’m quite a catch and I can prove it.”

“Really? That’s interesting.”

“Oh yes,” I began with the air of importance, “First of all, I have a good dowry. I’m an only child, which means I’m sole beneficiary of two apartments in Moscow, two summer villas…”

My parents blushed beet-red, evidently wanting to sink through the floor with shame. Uncle Anatole, his cheek upon his head, lifted his brow.

“Well?”

I waved my hand.

“And that’s not even including my other grandmother’s estate…”

“You know what, young lady,” said my would-be father-in-law, “I’m only a guest in this house, yet I would like to give you some advice.”

“What kind of advice is that?” I asked.

“Never brag about your property, especially what doesn’t belong to you so far. For it’s here today and gone tomorrow; you can never know whether or not you get it. Besides, people trying to show off like that don’t get much credit but look somewhat… pathetic.”

And just like that it started and the meeting was declared open.

“She wasn’t belted enough as a child!” said Aunt Klava in her thick voice, “I’m sorry for your mother and father but I’d have you thrashed if you talked to me like that!”

“Never mind, she’ll face the music quite soon,” said my father, “Life is gonna screw her anyway.”

“Dad, it’s my life, ok?” I said condescendengly.

That trial, however, had had a big impact on my father. Apparently, some negative remarks cast by my relatives along with my stunt made him thoroughly overhaul his upbringing methods. And dad, my soft dad who had never beaten me and turned a blind eye to all my pranks, changed dramatically after that incident. He went ballistic and as soon as we returned back home he gave me a proper flogging.

“We won’t take her to Kruglovo anymore. Staying there made her quite uncontrollable” said my mother adding fuel to the fire.

And then all hell broke loose. Every day Dad would find new reasons to punish me. In all likelihood, my offensive behaviour in the presense of Shurik’s father and Aunt Klava’s words had got in his head. But, maybe, the reason was different – it might just be the wrath of a father whose young daughter runs after men without dignity.

But, whatever it was, my life at my parents’ home had turned into hell. Usually, at about seven o’çlock in the morning, when it was still too early for me to get up to school (I always liked to stay in bed as long as possible, and would get up ten minutes before leaving) – a hard knocking at my door would wake me. After that my father would call my full name in an angry voice.

“Get up! Do you hear me?!”

Perhaps, that was the real reason I hated my original name to the extent of changing it. It was something like a Pavlov’s dog reflex: if every time you treat a canine to a cupcake you hit him on the head, the poor animal ends up fearing cupcakes. Just so did I feel when waking up in the morning to an angry roar calling my name which was accompanied by a hard knock at my door.

“Leave me alone!” I snapped out as I shrank into my duvet like a hunted animal.

“Shut up!!!”

Thereafter, things followed both expectedly and unexpectedly, which made them even more terrible. My duvet would get blown off me at one fell swoop, then a tremendous punch on the ear would toss me down on the floor. Then I was kicked and punched all over my body, slapped in the face and belted. There was my father’s furious face hovering over me, his bloodshot eyes behind his spectacles. I felt the red mist coming over me; I was so enraged that I couldn’t even feel the pain – and I tried to kick that hateful face and knock off those spectacles. Sometimes the spectacles flew off his nose, sometimes they got smashed and his blood splashed all over the bedroom.

“I hate you!!! I hope you die in a car crash!” I screamed at my father.

He would give me another whack or two before my mother pulled him away.

It was a great start to my day, wasn’t it…