Wednesday, 20th of June, 1990

Dear Diary
Last night I was reading our photo album. I noticed that mum didn’t have any photos of Emma. Maybe
she didn’t want this baby in the first place? I had lately started to think about that a lot. Maybe having
Natalia and me was enough for her, what did she need this baby for? Therefore she could perfectly get
rid of that. And what about father? She had pictures of father, but she never seemed to hug him at all.
She never searched for him afterwards either. She never agreed to listen to mine or Natalia’s advice not
even once. Or maybe she knew something then and never got to tell us, so we wouldn’t realise the
truth? Maybe she was guilty about something? I shook my head. No, never! Mum would never do
anything like that. How is it possible that I developed such a paranoid thinking?
Anyway, I woke up this morning, because the bell rang. When I opened the door, I saw Mrs. Kristina.
“Good morning, Vicky”, she said “is your mother here?”. I told her she was outdoors shopping, but I
wanted to see her too, so I asked to come in. We sat on the sofa and treated her a coffee. The truth is
that I didn’t want to see anybody first thing in the morning, but I somehow wanted to get rid of the
same routine. And a morning coffee with Mrs. Kristina was something completely different than me
scrubbing around on Romantic poetry.
Mrs. Kristina was trying to persuade me come to the ballet class. As I had such a romantic soul, she
said I would like it. And it would be such a different experience for me. She even said: “Come, and I
will play Waltz of the Flowers by Tchaikovsky”. My face lit up. I was trying to persuade Liv to learn
this piece on the piano and all the time she would reply that I was soppy.
On the evening Liv had invited me over for dinner. She promised to play the piano as well. I told her
“Either you are playing Chopin and Tchaikovsky r sad, because I knew I could do more than I was
doing at the moment. Also, as weird as it may sound, I suddenly drew something very bizarre. While I
was gazing at grandma’s tulip, I realised I had never made a picture of it. I had written a few poems
about it, but never had I ever drawn it. It was time, then. However, when I started drawing it seemed as
if I wasn’t into the real world. I only returned back to reality when Natalia entered the room. It was
when I finished sketching. She saw what I had done before I did. And she would turn her gaze from the
tulip to the sketch and vice versa. “Wow! Very good point of view”, she said. “It symbolizes birth and
death!” I was looking puzzled and took the sketch from her hands. What had I done? I had drawn a
dead tulip. “I…”, I said. “Well done, Vicky!”, my sister exclaimed. “You are a very deep thinker.”
When she left, I couldn’t take my eyes off the tulip. They say that art is the mirror of our mental world.
But how could this be possible that this was my mental world? I was the “flower child”, so how could I
imagine that flowers were dead? What on earth was wrong with me?
I left all my thought and the sketch with the dead tulip behind and got myself ready to go. “Mum,” I
called. “I’m going over at Liv’s”. She came from the garden. “Wait. Give her this, so she can try some”,
she said and gave me a plastic box with potato salad inside. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Yes, darling.
Why? I made it myself.” And if it had gotten rotten or something? Lord! What was wrong with me?
Why had I been so mistrustful?
I crossed the park. How could I be so melancholic? Nature and flowers are so beautiful. Their smell
was enough to cheer me up. I rang the bell. Liv appeared to the door wearing her long blonde braids.
She hugged me. I gave her the box with the potato salad. “My mum made this”, I replied sceptical, as if
I couldn’t fully persuade myself about the salad’s content.
We sat in the living room and Liv opened the piano. She promised she would play Waltz of the Flowers,
so I sat next to her. While she started playing, though, I had a very strange experience. In fact, I had
listened to Liv play the piano so many times, but this time it seemed so different. While she was
playing, it seemed to me as I was flying over a landscape, which was painted in pink. I felt as if the
keys were pink and I could feel them as if they were a landscape. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t playing the
piano myself nor did I have any idea about the keys. It was such a great feeling.
When the piece was over, I didn’t hesitate telling Liv about my feelings. Then she exclaimed: “Oh! You
have synesthesia. It is so rare to find this in people.” When I asked her about this, she replied: “A
synesthetic person uses one sense in order to have another sense. To put it simply it is like you can see
music or hear a colour. It’s so marvellous! I can’t experience anything like that myself.”
Yes, I maybe had synesthesia, but...I didn’t like that feeling. I was feeling as if I were losing control of
myself, as if I were stopping being Vicky.