Agreement with the Enemy - Apples (16.)
The garden became more and more often my escape and a place to recharge my batteries—basically, every spare moment. Gradually, I got into a kind of emergency, "survival mode", with the elimination of damage to my mental health. Overnight, a total memory reboot, and then starting the next day with a clean slate. It was a fooling the brain to push out everything unpleasant, even though somewhere back there, completely in the corner, everything was getting dangerously slick and strong. I tried to push out everything bad, and surprisingly it helped for a while. I'm not saying it was all sun-drenched, but it didn't hurt that much. Although truth be told, it was as much as ever.
It was the end of summer. A neighbor brought me a bag full of apples to preserve. I spread them out on the kitchen table. Apples are on one pile, waste is on another, chopped pieces are on another, and then in a bowl, already grated apples are used for filling jars. Whoever jars, knows what a mess this is. A lot of work, but what I wouldn't do for my poor child, right? We all loved strudel, after all, and I was really looking forward to it.
The jars on the table were filling up and a pile of bits and scraps was growing in front of me. When he arrived, he had quite a lot of "wind". Clearly he wasn't too thrilled that my entire table was taken up the moment he wanted to eat. You could say he was rather annoyed. The age-old wisdom that hunger is just hunger and that hungry people are evil was literally materializing in space. After all, the table is for eating, not for laying out apples from God knows who. And right NOW.
I grated in silence for a while longer. Maybe he shouldn't have been so smug. Maybe he should have toned down the emotion. Maybe, maybe, MAYBE! But the tone! THAT TONE! Suddenly everything inside me rebelled. I grabbed the bowl of those grated apples and swung it with all my might into the corner of the room. The bowl didn't survive and the apples were literally everywhere. It was like a little atomic blast with a pretty good radius. But the feeling! The amazing feeling of relief is beyond description. I was literally overcome with a wave of euphoria. Then I silently got up and walked down the center to another room.
He wasn't expecting that. He stood there like a scalded man. He stared at me with his mouth open and didn't say a word for a while. He sobered up in a second. Maybe that's when he realized the prospect of dinner wasn't looking good. He didn't even try to get me to clean up in any way. It was very strange. A whole new reaction I'd never seen from him before. He probably correctly guessed that it wouldn't be a good idea to tease a snake with his bare feet. I was the embodiment of the god of vengeance, and I certainly had no intention of doing any grunting. He just picked a really bad day. My daughter was enjoying herself on vacation. Nothing made me back down. Aries versus Aries, or who of whom? After three days of turning off the sound and coating the stove with black flora*) a miracle happened. Binec disappeared on its own. We never spoke of it again. Nothing happened, life went on.
It's a pity the strudel didn't happen then. However, something changed—a small but significant victory in our private relationship sandbox.
14. Sorry - I know I've been a bit of a jerk, and you haven't been easy on me. You just wanted to teach me to respect myself and be myself. That I'm not just a rag you can wipe any dirt with. That I have my pride, and no one has the right to mess with me in any way they want. But I was really looking forward to the strudel that day. You didn't have to do that. It was a shame. I was going to bake it for everyone. Even for you. And you could've eaten all your beloved patties. But as a real dullard, it still wasn't enough. I needed more lessons in this strange school of life. Many more.
*) black flora - black cloth for a sign of sadness
