I think I'm 4, though. I feel more 4 now than I felt when I was 4. I think back then I was really 40, and now I'm really 4. Time is going backwards and inside out, and I like it. 

So if I live, say, till 80, I have lived already half. But if I live till 90, I'm not quite there yet, and if I live till I'm 70, or 60, or 50, well, that would really suck. That means I have to bloody write faster!

But really...I don't know why I'm writing this and why you're reading this, if not for the reason of it being funny. Numbers are funny. Time is funny. It takes us all this time to get back to where we began, and we want to begin again, but the time is gone. Isn't this weird math? You know, when I was about 4, or maybe I was 5, or 6, I remember coming up with a theory. "People don't die," I thought to myself and nodded. I was eating juneberries from the juneberry bush at our dacha, and I put another berry in my mouth and thought, "This is how it works. People grow old, and when they think they're too old, they turn around and grow young again, and when they get too young, they grow old again, and so it goes." 

And another funny thing. From the entire wealth of my childhood it's these thoughts that I remember clearest, when I was alone and it was quiet and I could just think, and they were satisfying, these thoughts, I just knew I was right and it made me happy. You realize that I grew up like grass. There was no religion around me, no Jesus Christ, no church, only some distant Lenin, and so I was allowed to roam in my mind any way I wanted to. A different story about my body, of course, but once I had the freedom of my mind, I was safe. There no one could reach me. I still do this, I suppose. This whole "writing every day." I sit for hours alone with my own thoughts, and they make me so sure of myself and of what I think is right or wrong, that I get happy, so very happy.  

I guess I know now why I wanted to write this post, why all of a sudden my eyes are starting to get wet as I'm typing. I wanted to wish my own little self happy birthday and tell myself that I was right. That that's exactly how it works. That I'll be all right. That I'll take not only my mind away, but my body too, and that I'll be safe and happy in both. And that I won't really die, no. I'll turn around and grow young again, through my books, and when I get tired of being young, I'll grow old again, and so it will go.

С Днём Рождения, Ксюша! Всё будет замечательно, вот увидишь.  

Happy Birthday, Ksyusha! Everything will be great, you'll see.