Metempsychosis, M.A. (6)

My mother's feelings... My mother's feelings for me were not the same feelings she had for Agnes or Anton. But why wouldn't we have the right to mourn her as if she loved us the same way? Why does he act so erratically... Why wouldn't I 'deserve' the loss... He is trying to cut me off once and for all. I don't blame Agnes, she is on a receiving end, continuously made to believe I am evil incarnate. How naive of me to think that mother's death will change Anton's attitude, that he'll soften, melt a bit. No hope. Freezing cold love, humid distrust, dry hatred, burning distance. Why do I even insist of calling it love... It is about time to learn the lesson. My family is a mystery to me, an enigma I may never fathom. Did I rob them of something precious when I was born? Did they have me too early? Mother even refused to talk about the mastitis, as if I were unable to make the connection. Instead of enjoying her first newborn child, and learning how to feed it steadily, she was kept away from it in pain and high fever for the first crucial days of her pregnancy. When Agnes carried Kora and pregnancy was the endless topic from which I was excluded, mother said to her that when they eventually drained her breast, it was oozing with puss-like most revolting pungent liquid. The unforgettable stench must have influenced my mother's relationship with me for the rest of her life. I was blamed for the complications that came afterwards, for the recurring cysts, as if I, the infant, did it all on purpose. Sometimes these troubles are caused by poor feeding techniques, sometimes it's a bacterium, Staphylococcus Aureus. It could also be many different factors combined. On top of it, mother developed prolonged postnatal depression. The beginning of maternity must have been unbearably hard for her. There is no doubt in my heart that it also must have adversely affected her relationship with my father. What took me by surprise, however, was the words she left me with just before she died. We were alone in the room, she was resting, fully dressed, on top of the bed, as it was her custom in the last years. Her depression got worse, her pain could only be managed with increasing doses of transdermal morphine. We stayed silent for a long time, she even asked for her favoured Schubert piano pieces to be turned off. I was sitting on the chair next to the bed, looking at the fast-moving clouds, when, out of the blue, she said in much abated tone, as if spoken through a veil of a deep opioid slumber: I know what is wrong with you... I don't mean your body - your odd protrusion, or your flat chest - one can get used to that. You've got a mania of integrity, a mania of bending your character according to some alien ideal that doesn't exist in real life. It must be some kind of psychosis you developed early on, perhaps even as a child, a result of losing touch with your surroundings, with the present, with your siblings to whom you are so useless and disturbing. To be honest, I don't know where you got it from, this weird appearance, this outlandish behaviour, these obsessions with plants and dusty old books. I don't think it's inherited. Neither I nor your father were ever like that. We were down-to-earth, always face down the dirty mud of reality. I think you developed it by yourself, that sick elevated mind, this timid hypocritical snobbery, this bizarre sense of hidden superiority. The deranged phantasmagoria to be essentially better than anyone else while completely useless and maladapted at the same time... No one else in the family suffers from it, only you - this integrity psychosis of yours. As if you were simultaneously here and elsewhere. We've tried to keep you close to the earth, your father and I but it's obvious we failed. You were too stubborn, too pig-headed, immune to our influence... Like a virus, like an illness. That is why you grew up to be a freak of nature. I am sorry for you... We should have waited a bit longer. A year or two later, you would be an entirely different person. You would develop in a normal way, like your siblings. Look what a fine daughter she's got, and all you do is corrupt her, bend her to your morbid ways. It's too late now. It's all gone. What a waste...

And after that, she became completely silent again.

Those were her last words directed personally at me. I am glad I remained silent, that I did not seek any explanation. There was nothing to explain. She was unhappy to have me. I did not fulfill her expectations. Nothing new under the Sun. She died two weeks later, in an opioid sleep – her integrity intact.

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