Tatiana N. (SLE) - Energy and the need for active action

All through my childhood I was constantly away from home. When I was two, I went out into the yard with my older brother; from the age of six I was already exploring the neighboring courtyards; and by eleven we had a group of friends, including one interesting boy from the yard. Later he became an artist and moved to Moscow. He had lots of interesting books at home and all sorts of things, and he would take us off somewhere—into the nearby forests. This was actually the outskirts of the city, several kilometers out. When I was twelve, we were roaming through the forests; he took us to some cliffs.

<...> In first grade it was like this. There was a problem—I couldn’t sit still and would start walking between the rows. The teacher turned out to be pretty reasonable; she allowed me to do it.

<...> Such a child simply has to be involved in sports, to move—to spend as much time as possible in motion. It was absolutely impossible to make me sit, keep quiet, speak softly; I was very loud.

I have a photo from first grade: tousled hair, two pigtails—one ribbon already slipped down and came undone; my bangs are all sweaty, my collar is all crooked. Basically, they just caught me like a little animal, sat me down, and the photographer snapped the picture. There’s a photo from third grade: my eyes are just bulging—again, they caught me.

<...> Once we were walking along some pipe over a cliff at the height of a fourth floor. There were three boys and me. One of them walked partway along the pipe and sat down on it—he got scared and couldn’t go either forward or back; he ended up sort of hanging over the cliff. I went after him, started talking him into it, and brought him back. I wasn’t scared of the height at all.

Then there was another incident: I was twelve, it was at the Orlyonok camp; they sent me there for social work. We had to jump from a parachute tower. I climbed the tower, reached the top platform, and there you had to unhook a chain before jumping. The tower was twenty-five meters high, and psychologically you’re jumping into nowhere. Jumping with a parachute from a plane is easier than from a tower—there it’s high and there’s a kind of sense of unreality, while here it feels like the ground is right there. Before me, one or two boys reached the edge and then turned back, started going down the ladder toward me—they saw the ground and couldn’t jump. When you jump, the parachute opens behind you and you fly for a few seconds. Even if it’s just a few seconds, it’s still scary. A few seconds feel like a very long time. I remember one boy walked up in front of me, almost in tears, his face turned pale, and he recoiled and went back. I had a few seconds of the same feeling inside, but I gave myself an order: “Forward!”—and jumped immediately. Then I flew for a few seconds, the lines went taut, and then I started fooling around—kicking my legs, waving my arms. Bang—and the ground came very fast.