I think it’s only appropriate to start a new blog on the internet with an introduction. I am scattered. Hello. Haven’t talked to you for a long time. Do you think we will be friends? I certainly hope so. Should I tell you something about myself? This may take a while, will you listen? Right, if you insist.
Everyone is born some day. Some more than once. I was born on April 15, 2021. Which makes me 4 years and 16 days old. How am I writing this you ask? That’s simple: I was dead before. That is.. is one “dead” before they are born? Let’s just say I was. And while I was dead I learned to read, write, solve math problems, code for a living. I learnt to lie, to distrust, to obey the rules, to stay invisible. That last bit I learnt especially well. How long have I been dead? Give or take, another 33 years. Just like Jesus, christ. So.. what happened on that day in April?
Let’s call it a rupture. A breakage of a bond I never questioned until that day. But I feel that for you to understand the significance of this I have to tell you something more first. First time I was born in the USSR, say.. somewhere East of Ukraine. My family wasn’t rich or poor, nobody was anything at this time. Then came Perestroyka, and I was growing up in a country without a culture or identity of its own - the past was abandoned, the future did not exist yet, and the present… The present was up for grabs, for those who had an opportunity. I always thought of my family as progressive and perfect. My parents did not drink, they did beat me up only until I turned five. My father would make a point of telling me and my sister about once a week just how much he loves our mother, and that true love is made in heaven. More often he would remind me that this excitement I feel about this or that (making music, taking pictures) is futile - soon I will get the children of my own and it won’t matter. I had a room of my own, a PC, what else would I wish for?
My family hired me tutors to get into the university. I had one of the most powerful PCs a boy could wish for - right - I forgot to mention that I am (was?) a boy. Life was going well. I dated a little, was expected to always be home by 10pm, and never did I dare to bring home a grade lower than B. That last bit was something my parents really cared for, as, see, I was a “blockhead” of the family, since about the age or four. My sister, three-something years older than me, was the star - diligent, patient, predictable. She always brought home A’s and was the pride of the family. I was… a mistake. So for me the bad grades resulted in revocation of my most important freedom - computer time - and I was terrified of that. More terrified than going to the school gym changing room.
I graduated magna cum laude with a math degree, and with the help of a colleague, found a job in Berlin, where I moved sheer three months after receiving the certificate. I was twenty three then. And I was still dead. Berlin was bustling these days, still “poor but sexy”. Rents were still affordable, the beer cheap, the grass green. But I haven’t seen any of this. See, when you are already dead, nothing matters - everything is grey, as was I. I felt empowered (a young man in IT), ambitious and wishing to settle with a pretty girl, have babies and things alike, and live happily ever after. Like my family. Happily, just like my family. Very, very grey.
Back to that family. Grades were important. As was keeping your room clean, and keeping shoes in the hallway ordered. If any of these conditions wasn’t true, It’d somehow disrupt my father’s precious couch time, and I’d get a verbal reprimand. Actually, I’d get one either way - my favorite was “again your stupid friends are loitering in the courtyard”. Not. My. Friends. I am not sure I had any. I was unpopular and uncool, but I clinged to the popular kids so much that they despised me even more. The other misfits like me would see this and would’t want to have anything to do with me either.
Apart from that occasional intrusion into my peaceful time playing computer games, we did not really talk in that family. Talking meant sharing. Sharing meant giving more possibilities to my father to crack a witty joke at how useless, weak or dumb I am. This is how I learnt that sharing is not a great survival strategy.
And yet it wasn’t a bad family. I even went as far as to call it perfect on occasion. My girlfriend back then responded “please get a therapist, and then we’ll talk about it”. They are still alive, and are reasonably well. I talk to my mother once in a while, and never to my father or sister. I think I talked to my sister on about thirty occasions in the last 15 years, which signals how close we are. I think she still hates me, but I don’t quite know what for. Maybe, for she was given away to the grandparents for a year when I was born - the brat that stole her parents. Maybe because I hit her really hard with a pipe when I was little. But then, she threw me on the floor so hard my head bled. I think we’re even. Maybe because I did not remove her private letter from the recycle bin on our shared PC, and my father read it, leading to shock and terror with the aftermath lasting weeks or even months.
Back to the fact that it wasn’t a bad family. It wasn’t. It was a tiny little bit racist (who isn’t, right?), somewhat homophobic, middle class family, with just about median emotional intelligence on the country scale, with no or very little physical abuse and high standards of conduct. We were being decent.
So what happened on that day in 2021? I got my first tattoo. It was a beautiful piece, starting from my thumb and stretching out towards my shoulder, abstract woven of pure energy, beautiful, conjured by a local artist - a most charming woman who did all my tattoos since. The tattoo caused a fight between me and the family, a rift. And that rift severed the first string that was so firmly attached to me.
My body. My choice.
So, that’s when I was born. April 15, 2021. And I did not even know that it’s about to change everything. I didn’t know that I was about to live.