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"My Journey Through Life: Childhood" Part 3

Published: February 12th 2025, 3:00:19 pm

In 6th grade, it was decided that I would transfer to a different school. So, I started 7th grade at a new school, although not right away—because that summer, I was sick with bilateral pneumonia for almost four months. 😅 By the time I finally made it to school, the academic year was already well underway, and I felt especially awkward walking into a class that had already settled in. 🙈

I remember that during my first break after class, a boy started annoying me. He kept running around and teasing me—I honestly don’t even remember what for. But he irritated me so much that I had a split-second realization: either I do something right now, or I’ll end up in the same situation as in my previous school. And there was absolutely no way I was going to let anyone mess with me again. ☠️ So, without much thought, I grabbed a stack of textbooks from the nearest desk and smacked him over the head with it (not something I’m particularly proud of, to be honest 🙈). That was the moment he realized it was best to leave me alone. 😂 It was my first serious step toward learning how to stand up for myself. 😅

Funnily enough, a couple of years later, I found out that this boy had secretly been in love with me all the way until we graduated—which is why he had been teasing me 😂😂😂

Long story short, I quickly became the center of attention in my class. No one bullied or hurt me anymore, and everyone wanted to be my friend. I made a lot of friends from other classes too, even with students much older than me. I became a troublemaker. 😅🙈😂💀

I started listening to very heavy music (really heavy, there was nothing heavier 🙈🤣). My mom even tried to take my phone away so I couldn’t listen to it, but of course, that didn’t work 😅. By the time I was 11, I was already falling asleep every night with my favorite Rammstein—the lightest band I was listening to back then 🤣

Recently, I decided to ask ChatGPT why people who listen to heavy rock often turn out to be the kindest, sweetest, and most sensitive individuals. It gave me a pretty interesting and detailed answer! I learned that, for many people, this music is a great way to passively release pent-up emotion, especially anger. Studies also show that people who enjoy heavy music tend to have high intelligence 🤪. Hooray! 🤣 And it turns out that these people really are very sensitive and kind—especially those big, “scary” bearded guys, by the way 😅. At least, that’s what I’ve personally observed in my life!

Nowadays, I can’t listen to music that heavy anymore, but something lighter—like Rammstein—is, of course, sacred! 🤣

Suddenly, there was a line of boys wanting to walk me home. I was now popular throughout the school, and I was absolutely sure that no one would ever hurt me again. And if anyone dared to try, they’d regret it. 😅 I wouldn’t say I fought a lot, but if I needed to defend myself, I did.

I followed every school fashion trend at the time—I went through emo and ska phases, wore studded belts, and covered my backpack in pins (the more pins you had, the cooler and more stylish you were! 😂).

And now, a shocking revelation for those with a stable psyche—my first erotic phone photos. 😂 Please, try to keep it together—I’m 12 years old in those pictures. 😂😂😂

I have no idea where I got the courage to show you these cringeworthy photos, but I figured they might be worth a laugh. 😅😂 But hey, I was cool now, remember? I had to keep up with the trends. 😂

All the boys wanted to walk me home after school, but I lived just 10 minutes away and was deeply embarrassed to let anyone see where I lived. During that time, no one from school had ever been to my house because all my friends had nice houses or apartments, while we lived like hobos—my parents could only afford to renovate the interior.

So, I came up with a little trick. 😅 When someone walked me home, I would lead them to an apartment building nearby. I knew the door code because one of my classmates lived there. I would pretend to enter the building, wait for the guy to leave, then sneak back out and go to my real home. 😅

Years later, when I was 18, I reconnected with one of the boys who used to walk me home. Guess where he came to pick me up? Yep, the fake address I had given back then. 😂😂 I was standing outside, confused, because he texted that he was waiting under my building—but he wasn’t there. And then it hit me. 😂😂😂 I explained everything to him, and we had such a good laugh about it.

So, my life had completely transformed—I was swept up in teenage love stories, friendships, and wild adventures.

I had a best friend, my classmate, and we were inseparable! She taught me how to pluck my eyebrows, shave my legs, and—shock alert—she even taught me how to kiss so that I wouldn’t embarrass myself with a boy during my first real kiss. 😂😂😂

And now, another bombshell—yes, I kissed not only this friend but also many other girlfriends and even classmates in the school bathroom. 😅😂😂 No, I wasn’t into girls—I was definitely into boys. But this was just how we helped each other out, making sure every girl was ready to kiss the boy she liked. 😅😂

Ah, teenage chaos. 🤪

And then, my childhood trauma started creeping in. At 12 years old, I began drinking moonshine, which my friend’s mom kept hidden in the basement. Every day after school, we got drunk at her house. There was other alcohol too, which, back then, was ridiculously easy for us to buy, but vodka was the strongest, obviously. 🙈😅

Things kept getting worse. I drowned my emotions, my unspoken pain, my insecurities in alcohol. My borderline personality disorder started showing in full force—I began cutting myself, especially when I was drunk. Sometimes, my friend and I would pass out on the grass outside, my arms covered in cuts.

Yes, we were only 12, and yes, it was terrible. But I was just trying to silence the feelings screaming inside me, desperate for someone to hear them. And to numb myself even further, I once stuck a needle under my big toenail until it turned black and fell off. 🙈😅 At the time, I didn’t understand why I was doing these things, but after working with several therapists for years, I do now.

Eventually, I had so many scars that my mom took me to the hospital to have them removed. Not because she was worried about me, but because, in her words, she didn’t want me to “embarrass her” with how I looked. And I want to say that removing scars is a painful and rather lengthy process, there was very little pleasant here 😅

When I realized that doing it on my arms was no longer an option—because it turned out this was something not everyone did, and it was better to keep it hidden—I started doing it on my thighs, in a place where even summer shorts wouldn’t reveal anything.

I remember our class went to a summer camp in Mariupol by the sea (a city that the Russians wiped off the face of the earth when the war started). And there teacher in the camp saw me cutting myself—sometimes with broken glass, sometimes with sharp scissors. She asked why I was doing it, and it was clear she was deeply worried, struggling to find the right words to make me stop. But all I asked was for her not to tell my mom, and she didn’t—for which I’m very grateful.

By that time, I already had a lot of friends, I was popular among boys, and people were drawn to me. Yet, inside, there was still a vast, black void that swallowed every good emotion and tried to take over my mind. I constantly felt an endless loneliness, as if there was absolutely no one around me—as if I was completely alone in the entire world. (As I later found out, these were also symptoms of borderline personality disorder.) Some might find it shocking, but to me, it felt like I didn’t even experience any physical pain—only deep emotional pain that I was trying to numb in any way I could.

At the time, I had no idea that what I was doing affected the people around me. (By the way, a little side note: my mom and I have had this weird “superpower” our whole lives—wherever we go, whether it’s a store, a pharmacy, or anywhere else, within just a few minutes, a crowd of people suddenly appears where we were almost alone 😅 All our relatives, my friends, and everyone who knows us are already aware of this phenomenon 🤣 For example, a couple of weeks ago, I went to a lab to get a blood test. When I arrived, there was only one girl ahead of me in line. But when I walked out of the room 10-15 minutes later, I literally took a step back in shock—there was a whole crowd of people inside! And it has always been like this with me and my mom 😅 Somehow, we ended up with this strange and completely useless superpower 🤣) So for some reason, people already followed my lead in one way or another, and some even started doing the same thing. I remember one boy in the camp carving my name into his leg with scissors. (By the way, he was actually older than me, but he was really short—literally up to my shoulder.) After that, we ended up in a relationship and even dated for a whole month 😅. A lot of people asked if I was okay with the fact that he had to stand on something to kiss me, but I didn’t care at all. I wasn’t embarrassed, and I walked around holding his hand without a second thought. There were also others who decided to carve something into their leg, but they quickly realized that, well, it freaking hurt—so they never did it again 🤣.

This went on until I was 16. After that, I stopped self-harming.

One day, I came home completely drunk—barely able to stand—and with cuts all over my hands. 🙈 I was 12 years old 🤣 And Of course, I was punished for the entire summer. I wasn’t allowed to see my friends and was put on “work therapy.” My parents even threatened to either send me to jail or make me care for children with cancer in a hospital. I have no idea how that was supposed to stop me from drinking, but their threats sounded extremely convincing. 😂

Once my mother beat me with a towel and patted me a couple of times in my life, but there was no more physical violence on their part against me, only moral and psychological 😅 and thank them for that 🤣 real physical violence happened to me much later, when I entered the university.. but more on that later.

I want you to understand that this kind of upbringing was considered normal at the time. Our parents grew up in the Soviet Union, and compared to what their parents did to them and what they had to endure.. I think, I have no right to complain 🙈 So please don’t judge them too harshly. Now that they have completely changed and become totally different people, I can see just how deeply they were, and still are, wounded children themselves—children who were treated harshly by life.

They always did their best to make sure I never lacked anything. They just did it in their own way, the only way they knew how at the time.

But despite everything, my life in the new school was exciting. No one bullied me anymore—not even once.

Except for one guy. And he quickly regretted it. 💀

That summer, my best friend and I loved hanging out in a park near my house. There was a small playground there, and we enjoyed riding the carousel (vodka or not, we were still kids at heart). But older boys would sometimes chase us away.

They were much older than us, and they forced us to try nasvai (do you guys know what that is?) and often stole our food and lemonade. And for us, those treats were a luxury—we spent every coin we managed to find on the street. We’d collect spare change that people dropped under store counters and use it to buy snacks for our walks.

One guy in particular always took everything from us.

So, I had an idea. We’d buy a laxative, pour it into a bottle of lemonade, and bring it to the playground, knowing he would steal it. 😅

And that’s exactly what we did. We emptied an entire bottle into the lemonade (I’m honestly glad he didn’t die from that 😅😂), then showed up at the playground right on time.

Sure enough, as soon as he saw us, he called us over. And of course, he took our lemonade. I remember struggling to keep a straight face. 🤪

He drank it—and even shared it with his friend. 🙈

That guy disappeared for a whole week. 🙈 At first, we started to worry, but eventually, he came back. We asked him where he had been, though we already had a pretty good idea. 😂

He went on and on about how he had been stuck on the toilet for days, giving us every excruciating detail. That was it—we couldn’t hold it in anymore and just burst out laughing. 🙈

Then he froze. It suddenly clicked. 😅 He screamed, “IT WAS YOU TWO!!!” and we ran for our lives. 😅 We never walk back to that park again. 😂😂

Years later, this same guy found me on Instagram and messaged me. He had no profile picture, so I asked who he was. His response “You and your friend poisoned lemonade when we were kids.” 😂

We laughed about it and even became friends))

I have so many more stories like this, but I’m afraid Patreon doesn’t have enough space. 😂

P.S.

Interesting fact: did you know that I have a strong fear of insects? I’m afraid of any insects, even butterflies. When I was about three years old, my parents played the movie ‘Starship Troopers’ for a family viewing 😅 I want to remind you that my mom was only 19 when she had me, and as they both say now, they didn’t have much sense at that age and didn’t understand many things, like how to make sure a child develops a phobia from a young age 🤣 And it really messed with my life. I literally couldn’t sleep at night during the summer, terrified that a centipede (which was pure hell for me) or a bunch of other creatures that lived in our garden under the window would get into my room 🤣 But now, thanks to years of personal work, spiritual practices, and psychological techniques, I’ve learned to manage and cope with my phobias and fears. You’ll definitely read more about this later ))