A + I + M

The Children of the God of Thunder

this is me. I chose it, this picture, because even though it is out of focus, i believe it is my best portrayal of self. it is very me. out of focus, not too close, like your vision is when you’re looking at me in this photo. you’re perceiving my vision and my own self when you’re talking to me - except you seem to be able to string together stories, concepts and keep pace of your own idea and your own being. look at you go. look at us now getting lost in a slice of time between ourselves and everything else in the present moment.

this is a project about how seeing the torture of my own mummy, my brother and feeling the torture of my own self leaves traces of itself in every present moment. it is a record of my self. it is a record of what happened. it is a record of the most horrific terror that a person should not feel. but they felt. they felt so anyway.

I had not been to the place where it all happened in 11 years. The other places, I hadn’t been to in 20 years. Like the inside of my home.

But before that, I took into view the places that once felt as real as a glass bottle breaking right next to you. They felt so real. Real and limiting. Once they felt like a dream - one that never moved you and never really shook you either.

In my early teens my (unknown at the time) depression, which I was never aware of, began to burn brighter. The first time I thought about my dad after years of calm, I walked to the kitchen drawer and began to cut my fingertips to feel something. But I never felt anything. If I felt anything, it was shock that I didn’t feel even an ounce of something. For the next 10 years, I would cut my fingers to rid myself of identity. I felt I had so little that I wanted to erase it all, because it was easier than finding it.

You must wonder at this point what this is about. I cannot tell you in a short and concise way. There is simply too much information to get through. Let’s start here.

Just like your family, we are complex people with complex relationships. My mum’s side of the family grew up in Lithuanian farm homes, surrounded by pine forests and rivers as clear as glass. It sounds idyllic, like the kind of lives we all share and reshare on instagram stories. Where girls in French dresses surround themselves with baby ducks, horses and rabbits and bathe in rivers in the dappled sunlight. Our people went through it all - through several wars where our culture was suppressed and banned outright, where our people dug shelters next to their potatoes in their gardens and prayed as shadows of bomber planes flew across our hands.

My great grandmother was a mother to my sister. A person she loved very much. A good woman with white hair down to her knees, who walked barefoot everywhere she went. Only as she was used to doing so in Siberia, where she was a slave.

I grew up in a forest that had one road leading out of it. It was called ‘Sand Road’, and it’s original form: Smelio Gatvė. We had a Rottweiler that once nearly bit my ear off because I hugged him so hard. We went to the hospital and I remember my right ear feeling wet. A green solution was applied to it. Father took my beloved dog into the forest to beat him and abandon him. Later, we had another dog - her name was Nikė. I loved her and I think she loved me back. Sometimes, I think she felt sad for all of us. I felt she was sad. Simka, our cat, was our friend and protector - she took care of us every day. I am not joking right now. Simka used to walk me to my bus stop that took me to school and went back home by herself. Every time we left the house, she would walk with us and greet us back when she could. Like most animals and living beings in my home, she took my father’s abuse. Like all of us, she stayed. I know Simka could have ran away, I know it would have been the best option for her. For our dog Nikė, too. I also know that they both stayed.

I am Mon and I am writing this about my life. It is hard, mostly because it feels like it happened to another person that looks like me. I write from my own detached perspective. We were all numb to the world and had become passive in our own. Our world was simply his world that we were trying to get out of.

In 2017, when I finished university, I went to see my GP. A 15 minute session to tell her all of that. To fill in the light spaces and the dark spaces, to tell all of the stories. I cried, I became scared. I felt shame and the fear of doing something new. I left my doctor’s office and walked around London for hours. I walked my body until it couldn’t walk any longer. I went to Tiger Tiger and bought candles. I felt both dead and like I am resigning to death in that moment. The cashier looked at my face and smiled with such effort at me that I felt to give her a very limp smile back.

I told my friend, Fanni, through a text what happened. I walked to her place and we made brownies. I needed a friend that day.