The story: A child of transitions

A child of the Post-communist transition. This is how all children, born in the 1990s in Eastern Europe, are called. That’s also when I showed up. Ironically somehow. It turned out that the transition was not just about changing the political regimes, currency systems and international agreements. Rather a child of transitions, so I would call it. A transition from a pure and innocent soul, coming with peace and eager to spread light, through times of anger, hatred and pain, to reach perhaps the greatest and most important lesson in life - forgiveness.

I don't know if I was wanted or planned child. All I know is that I was not supposed to be my parents' first born. But the soul before me chose not to see this world. Or it was me and I tried to escape, knowing what awaited me. Maybe only the subconsciousness and the Higher Self know this. However, as the Bulgarian saying goes - once you get caught up in the dance, you have to play it till the end. So I was born and, according to my relatives, I was an extremely calm and mild child. I slept alone, I played alone. I just wanted to be fed, bathed, clothed and loved. The latter, however, was not exactly as planned. Make a plan to make God laugh, right…

The first memories of my childhood are how my parents and relatives fight. I still hear screams and specific voices in my head (no, I do not have schizophrenia, relax, or at least I don't know if I do). Apparently, this is from where I developed my intolerance to raised voice. My father's parents did not like my mother, at least not until her last months. I don't know the reason for that, but I do not think it's my business. There was constant arguing about something - mainly about property and who bought what, what belonged to whom, and so on. Materialism, materialism… Times were hard. People lined up to buy bread with coupons - a very well known story that, I'm sure, all my peers have heard. A communist job and a misunderstood democracy so to say, but that is another story.

More or less this is how the first 11-12 years of my life passed. The relatives constantly either did not look at each other or yelled at each other without listening, there was always someone who was offended by someone for something. A father reaching for the glass, another women and gatherings with friends. Sometimes he was leaving and I did not see him for months, other times he was coming back, remembering that he had a wife and a child. A man who did not dare or did not want to take care of his family. And a mother lost in her own pain and sadness for being underappreciated by her loved ones, feeling invisible and unloved by her husband, and afraid to return to her parents, who had clung onto her absent husband like a victim with the Stockholm syndrome.

Yes, those were the times - people were ashamed to admit their weaknesses and seek help, so they hid them the best way they could. And my mother could by pouring her own pain and anger on me. Just like written in a workbook - the stronger overcomes the weaker. Punishments, screams and beatings just because I did not cut the potatoes the way she wanted, just because I broke a glass ashtray, just because… I did things like any other child (for the record - I never allowed myself to raise my voice to or provoke any adult in any way, whether it was a relative, a teacher or a stranger). Someone will say, "Come on, big deal, we've all been beaten, it was part of the upbringing process." Yes, but no! The unconscious mates can continue to "educate" their children this way, if they know no other way. But remember that this is not how healthy adults are raised, but rather people who need help. They will become part of the vicious cycle and continue to pass on this type of "upbringing" to the future generations, if they do not realize that there is something rotten and do not look for a way to break the cycle. I recently read a thought: "Do not beat your child because it spilled the milk. It will take you 5 minutes to clean it, but it will take the child half of its lifetime to heal. ”I liked it because it's true. My truth. I love my mother very much, even though I didn't say it out loud. I loved her so much that I became her parent when she was having an emotional crisis and started crying incessantly because she was alone, because her husband was gone again, because she felt hopeless… I learned not to be weak because I had to help mom. Otherwise I would have become a target and easy to be hurt. And who would take care of mom, if I was not there? Saying "I love you" to someone was a weakness for me. That's how they taught me. After all, my relatives had never said those words, at least not in front of me. Only my mother said that when she was in a good mood. But I could not say those two words. They were stuck in my throat. It took me more than 2/3 of my life to realize that I was broken and I needed help and another 2-3 years after that to look for it, but more about that in another post.

When it comes to my father - I hated him. I hated him so much that my body shivered when I would see him. I was not 10 yet when I started begging my mother to find me another father. I wanted to run away from him and never see him again. Anyway, he had always been somewhere else, but not where he was needed.

Around my age of 12-13, we finally left him. Me and mom went to live with my mother's parents. My father did not call me for months and I felt good. I did not want to see him. But one gloomy day, he reappeared, claiming he wants to see his daughter. I refused at first. But because of my mother, I finally agreed. She was afraid that she won’t be able to manage on her own - financially, with me and with life. So I had to see my father in order to get his financial support. 2-3 years later he decided that he wanted us to become a family again, and of course my mother agreed without much reservation. The three of us lived together for a while so he could leave us again. I will never forget the evening they both talked in the other room. Everything could be heard. My mother had the strength, the courage, or the weakness to ask him to stay home for the night and leave in the morning. And so it happened. In the morning I heard him packing his staff. I locked myself in my room because I didn't want to see him, but he started knocking on the door, wanting to enter. No, not to say “goodbye”, no, no. But because there was a TV in my room that he had bought and he wanted it back. Like parents like child, but I would add "unless one becomes self-aware". As he was leaving the apartment, he turned, looked at me, and slammed the door behind himself without saying a word. I locked myself in my room. I wanted to shout, to slam, to break staff. But the only thing I could do was to sit on the floor and cry quietly so my mom would not hear me. This is how my father left my life once again and got lost for months. Then began a new series of emotional crises of my mother, about which I will not go into detail. I had not forgotten how to be her parent, so I took care of her once more.

I turned 18 and my graduation was knocking on the door. Student exams as well. I had 1 year to prepare for them. In the meantime, my father had reappeared on the map yet again, but this time he kept some distance. Of course, my mother wanted me to be nice to him, because he was the source of money for my prom, for private lessons, for university fees. I cannot lie, he helped me financially, at least in the months when he was present. I was not a spoiled teenager, rather I got the things I needed.

About a year later, after my prom, my father decided that he wanted us to get back together, but this time on the condition that we buy an apartment. Do not think he wanted to buy it himself, no. My mother had inherited a small apartment from her grandmother. According to my father it had to be sold out in order to buy a family apartment. I was firmly against it, and this was the beginning of the series of serious arguments I had with my mother. After yet another argument, in which she claimed that I and the whole world were against her happiness, my grandmother and I agreed (my maternal grandmother's consent was necessary for the sale of the small apartment). During this time, we accidentally found out that my mother had stomach cancer. This was the first time (I will write about the diagnosis, treatment and her last years in a separate post). Thus began the great migration of the nations. We moved to the neighborhood where I lived for the first 12 years of my life, and which made my stomach churn every time I remembered of it. But all for the family! The three of us lived together again. This time I didn't care what happened between the two of them, whether they were happy, etc. I just wanted peace and quiet. But inside my mother, those two things were missing. The three of us lived together until the end of 2011, when after 3 months of agony, one December evening my mom passed away in our home. The home she had dreamed of so much. I strongly hope that the last 3 years of her life, spent in this apartment, were her dream come true.

After her death, my relationship with all my relatives broke down. It was as if my family was a guitar - me at one end of the strings, my relatives - at the other, and my mother was the actual strings. She was everything I had – a mother, a father, a sister, a friend. When she left me, all the strings broke. I lost my best friend, my sister and both my parents. I was no longer connected in any way to the people with whom I share the same blood. They all faded away somewhere in the dark. However, they also did not want stay in touch with me (except for my mother's sister, who called me once in order to fix some property documents ...)

My mother died and I was orphaned. An orphan with a father, full of pain, sadness and wrath, although I did not realize it at the time. Only 9 years after my mother's death and going through various methods of treatment and self-awareness, I realized that by hating my father, I hated a part of myself. And to change that, I had to forgive him, but most of all, I had to forgive myself. I realized that looking the enemy in the eye — the one I was waging war against — I was actually looking in the mirror.

*If you read my story until the end, I sincerely Thank You! More about the relationship with my mother and with my father in separate posts.

Peace, Love & Light

Autor: Vania Dzhoneva - Soul Healer

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