Not pregnant yet? You bet!. Rimma Efimkina

your story and your knowledge with others.

      I would like to end this commentary with Marilyn Murray’s characteristic of a true marriage;. According to her, it is a partnership that gives both partners an opportunity to become what God intended them to be, not the kind where one “becomes” and the other rots19.

      “Receive the package earlier”

      The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.

Carl Young

      A pretty woman of twenty-nine sighed after another participant’s session on the subject of IVF and told that she was no stranger to IVF. She had done it three times – still no results, i.e. she got pregnant twice, but the labor started as early as half term, even the ring did not prevent this from happening. Kseniya lost her baby twice at 20 week of pregnancy.

      Kseniya had been married for ten years, and her husband wanted her to give birth as soon as possible. He said his mother needed a grandchild, so he hurried his wife to become a mother. I was not surprised that the interested person in the baby being born, the customer so to say, was the mother-in-law; I had already got used to such misperceptions in my customers. I was more surprised, however, that Kseniya got married so early. Why, nowadays young people are not in a hurry to tie themselves in marriage when they are twenty, they study, make careers, get experience. Kseniya explained that her father thought the only way to have sex was to married. Otherwise, others would have thought that his daughter was a tramp.

      I was outraged by this answer. In my imagination I saw two puppet-masters ruling over the life of the young family. On the one hand, there was the mother-in-law trying to fill her own empty life using the young people, on the other hand, there was the father and his ambitions his daughter had to satisfy by giving up her own life experience.

      The night before Kseniya saw a dream about two monkeys:

      My husband and I are in an exotic country. He surprised me with renting to chimpanzees of the opposite sex.

      He went away with the female, and I was alone in my room with the male who was making sexual advances towards me. I was shocked and disgusted at the monkey for sexual harassment, at my husband who rented the monkeys, at the tourists who use this kind of services, at animal trainers for teaching monkeys to do this. I was wondering if my husband knew what he bought into.

      Besides being disgusted I was ashamed to be a part of this. Then my disgust gave way to acute pity towards the monkey. I understood that it is but a mindless victim who was taught to entertain tourists.

      I was amazed by Kseniya’s dreams. The symbols were so clear that you couldn’t but envy the way her subconscious giving its messages to her in such a way. I asked Kseniya to voice the monkey in the first person to realize what aspect of her life was encoded in the image of the chimpanzee. Here is what she said: “I am a monkey, a mindless victim of people who taught me to satisfy their carnal needs. And this is how I live, and this is the essence of my existence”. When I asked what this was about, Kseniya honestly told that being a mother was not her choice, it was a wish of her family.

      We met at a different workshop in two months. The night between the first day of the three-days workshop and the second one Kseniya dreamt another dream. She told about it in the group:

      I’m queuing at the post office, everybody crowds and shoves their notices at the post-officer. And I need to pick up a package. At this point, the officer whispers quietly into my ear: “I’ll tell you a secret: you must have received this package earlier. But I was not the one to tell you this!” I stood there lost and surprised and thought: “So, what am I supposed to do? File a complaint?”

      – Kseniya, how does this dream remind you of your life? Who lied to you and what this was about?

      – I remembered my first man. I met him when I was seventeen, he was older than me. In a month he told me he was married and he had a child. He was just leaving his wife when he met me. My parents forbade me from seeing him, they told it would end badly. So it did in three months – we ran a woman down.

      – You? Who was driving?

      – He was. But I was sitting right next to him.

      – So why did you say we instead of he.

      – Because it sort of happened because of me.

      – How was that?

      – He was not himself. The day before he insisted I packed my stuff and moved out of my parents’. I got scared and came without my stuff. He got angry and said he would drive me back if I was not able decide; he got me into the car and drove. He was going over the speed limit and ran down a woman who was crossing the street.

      Kseniya hid her face and cried.

      – What is going on with you?

      – It pains me! I didn’t know she was dead at first, I was hoping she was alive… That his wife taught me what I should say as a witness. I lied that I didn’t know him, because if I told I was his girlfriend, I wouldn’t be able to witness and it that case he wouldn’t have had any witnesses at all.

      – What were you supposed to say?

      – That the woman threw herself under the car! But that was not true, I saw her, I cried to him, but he drove so fast!

      – So, you lied?

      – Yes. And it haunts me. I remember his wife saying: “It’s a good thing she did not have kids!” Maybe my infertility is the way I pay for that lie?

      – What are you most concerned with in this story?

      – That this woman could have lived.

      – What does this mean to you?

      – That she could have had kids!

      – Tell her about this.

      Kseniya chooses one of the members of the group for the role of the woman who died, stands in front of her and says:

      – I have wronged you. If it wasn’t for you, my man would have driven me to my parents’ and broke up with me “forever” yet another time. I was sitting in the car thinking about the pain I would feel as I go out, close the door and be alone. But this way he needed me, we communicated for six more months…

      – And then?

      – And then, when the case was closed, we still broke up. I got tired of him not being able to make a choice, got tired of being jealous, in pain and waiting for something. My father said: “I told you so!” So I married a different man, so that my father stopped bothering me with his reproaches.

      – Exchange places with the dead woman and tell something to Kseniya on her behalf.

      Kseniya, on behalf of the dead woman:

      – I don’t care. This fuss has nothing to do with me anymore.

      When Kseniya returned to her place, she confessed she felt better as she shared this secret.

      – I couldn’t talk to anybody about this. My husband got mad when my previous relationship with a man came up. He hears only that I was not a virgin when he married me.

      – Tell him about it.

      Kseniya, talking to her “husband”:

      – I’m angry at you pretending I didn’t have another man before you. I did, and he is a whole part of my life. Yes, I’m not a saint and I’m glad I’m not. I wish I dated me before getting married!

      – Why didn’t you?

      – Because of my father! I was fed up with his reproaches!

19

Marilyn Murrey, Prisoner if Another War: A Remarkable Journey of Healing From Childhood Trauma.