SWEPT UNDER THE CARPET
Secret stories embroidered on the bottom side of the carpets.
text on "RED CARPET" in polish
text on "GREEN CARPET" in polish
I was 42 years old. A stranger woman wrote to me via Facebook what can I say about my childhood. A question about childhood asked by a stranger - it was strange. I replied in one sentence that I had dogs, parents and that's it. And how was it exactly? I had a loving grandmother. Distanced grandfather. A cool dad, but under mom's thumb. And a moody, toxic mom, uninterested in being a mother, and therefore in me. I was a "get on your own" kid with keys around my neck, "smart people never get bored" and intimate with the shelter dogs that ran through our house. I was short, probably after my grandmother. Parents were very tall, dad was two meters. I did not jump over 155 cm, although I was waiting all the time for me to grow more. I felt very lonely. My childhood reminds me of a draft. At the age of eighteen, I asked my parents if I was adopted because I missed my mother's love, for which I still tried unsuccessfully. I heard I'm their baby, so it's clear. It just happens anyway. In college, during a lecture on hereditary traits, I argued with the lecturer that it was not true that children of blue-eyed parents could not have hazel eyes, because I was living proof that they could. I remember my mum's hissed text during some other argument "we took a cat in a poke from the hospital", I MEOW! I want to be that cat. My mother used to be mean. Well, I've accepted that she didn't love me. My life was a growing tree, and my childhood a rotten branch among the green ones. And suddenly a question about my childhood. It soon became clear that my younger sister had asked the question. Adopted by a married couple of psychologists who didn't know she had siblings. I also found out that I have a brother who is two years older than me. He, in turn, ended up in a married couple of geologists. He currently works as a taxi driver. We even had an idea to take a taxi with him, and if he was a boor, we'd say nothing, and if he turned out to be cool, we'd admit we were his sisters. I was adopted straight from the hospital. And all my life I thought I was an only child. What was the effect of discovering that I was adopted? I understood some of my mother's oppressive behavior towards me. I was to be responsible for the behavior of my biological mother. Penance for her actions fell to me. Besides, I was uprooted from family connections, stories about ancestors near and far. Suddenly I had no roots. I came out of nowhere. Contact with my sister quickly broke off. I was just satisfying her curiosity. She really wanted to meet her biological mother, I didn't. I had my difficult mother who raised me and a cheerful father. They were my parents. I knew them. I was an only child in my mind. Only now I don't belong to the group of people who thunder that if someone doesn't want a child, they can give it up for adoption and that's it. Because being an adopted child is a very big problem. Here is an excerpt from a poem about my mother I wrote as a teenager:
You in the chair,
book, your style
and thought enchanted into silence.
You insisted on staying like this,
not saying anything,
peek.
You are my altar, landscape, lack.
You left me and you won't let me.
Shall I curse you, push you,
or embrace you.
Aaaaa wait, I'll sweep your tears off the floor,
I don't want to cut myself again.
TRANSLATION:
I forget everything that can affect me,
But also all my faults,
All the bad things that happen to me.
I sweep it under the carpet and never look in there.
I don't love my husband, although we've been together for 20 years, sweep under the carpet,
I love my friend, but I can't admit it, sweep under the carpet,
Depression, on the edge of a razor blade, sweep under the carpet,
Fear for the future, sweep under the carpet,
Betrayal and happiness because of this, sweep under the carpet,
Crying and constant anxiety, sweep under the carpet,
Never ending grief for the mother, sweep under the carpet,
Lies not to go crazy, sweep under the carpet,
Shaking hands when I can't control fear, sweep under the carpet,
Anger at the child when I can't control my own life, sweep under the carpet,
Desperate attempts to attract attention, sweep under the carpet,
The whole hidden life, sweep under the carpet.
And everything there, under that carpet piles up and builds up,
Everything stays.
It's a mental, metaphysical carpet that envelops the inner things
And keeps them from getting outside,
And it can be as big as I want.
It keeps betrayals, lies between his soft bristles
And nothing can pull it out.
Thanks to it, my life is a clean, oak, durable floor for the world.
TRANSLATION:
PREPARATIONS FOR THE REALIZATION OF THE RED CARPET
PREPARATIONS FOR THE REALIZATION OF THE GREEN CARPET