A letter to parents who have been gone for a long time…. Nikolay Lakutin

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      My husband left me the other day… yes… So here it is… Paper, a pen, a bottle of rum started, snowflakes outside the window, and a room electric heater. Here's my whole company at the moment.

      …

      damn, it's probably stupid to write all this, but… But it's just really hard. It's hard because of that… That there is nothing more than what and who I have lived all these years. Probably…, every person…, no, of course, not everyone that I am, really. But there are those besides me who have lost a lot in life. Who lost not some property, but lost much more valuable "attributes" of life. Those who have lost a part of themselves.

      I'm 28. Six relatively good years of marriage are in the past. No baby, no kitten. Artyom said that he fell in love with another woman, packed up his things and left.

      I don't know what to do. I don't feel betrayed. I have a feeling that a part of me has just been torn off. They tore it off with bones and meat. And now it's like I'm neither alive nor dead. I seem to be there, but I don't seem to be there. I don't feel anything… Nothing…

      If I had my mother by my side… she would have supported me, she would have hugged me, she would have said what mothers always have to say in such cases. If my father had been with me, of course, he would not have let Artyom go without a hard blow to the jaw. And then he would sit down next to me, put his hand on my knee, and say nothing. He wouldn't have said anything, but I would have understood. I would have felt him, just his mesmerizing warmth, strength, and protection. My father always stood up for me, he never let me get hurt. As long as he was alive, I was… and I guess you could say that I was alive, too. I was alive, that happy and carefree girl who loved life, who knew how to smile in a completely different way. I, who really lived as if on another Earth.