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"My Journey Through Life: Childhood" Part 7

Published: February 16th 2025, 4:00:08 pm

Finally, the long-awaited moment happened—my dream came true.

My parents gave me my first camera for my 15th B.Day, which I used for almost the next ten years—my Nikon D90 🖤

To this day, I talk about it with immense gratitude to my family. My parents could have dismissed it as just a hobby, something unserious, thinking that photography wouldn’t bring in a living. But they saw how passionate I was about it for years, how it didn’t matter to me what I was shooting with, as long as I could shoot. They believed in me, even though they never said it outright, but their actions showed it! My mom told me that they had been saving up for the camera and even asked my grandfather to pitch in the remaining amount. You can’t even imagine how happy I was at that moment. And, of course, I immediately ran out to take pictures of everything I saw 😅

To learn how to use the camera properly, I asked my mom to enroll me in a photography school. At that time, there was only one in our city 🤣. My mom paid for the lessons, and there we were taught how to use camera settings, studio equipment, and so on. You’ll laugh, but almost immediately, I started making money from it—no matter how cringe my photos may look now, at that moment, they were considered amazing 🤣. A shoot cost around $10-12, and as I did for the next 10–13 years, I saved up all the money I earned and spent it on gifts for my boyfriend and family, never spending a penny on myself 🙈. It’s embarrassing to admit, but for many years, I would pay for my boyfriends in the cinema, for transportation, and so on, as they all came from low-income families—I never had a super-rich boyfriend )

I remember that with my first earnings, I ran to buy a sports bag for my boyfriend. At that time, those big rectangular shoulder bags were in fashion. And this went on for my whole life—I just couldn’t spend anything on myself, it felt unnatural to me 🙈 I lived with the firm belief that earning money was for supporting and making my loved ones happy 🙈 I only learned to spend money on myself recently—it took years of work with psychologists and deep inner work)

It’s embarrassing to say that when I was 19–20 years old and had a different boyfriend, I pawned all my gold chains, which had been passed down to me from my great-grandmother, to buy him gifts—like a branded Diesel cap he wanted. I even sold my printer and other equipment to buy him an iPhone (and he complained that it only had 16GB of storage, so I had to sell it, and we got him a new one with 32GB instead). But I’ll talk about that person later—that horrifying chapter of my life is something I still need to gather the strength and courage to speak about publicly for the first time.

A bit later, my mom’s business started thriving (just a reminder that my dad had been working in the police force his whole life until retirement, and police salaries in Ukraine were miserably low). My parents were able to buy good cars for both my mom and dad. My mom started buying expensive clothes (though for some reason, most of the time she bought second-hand—probably because she still had a “poor person” mindset or I dont know what it was 😅). This is now absolutely normal and even coool in Ukraine, but then everything was a little different) But I can’t say that much changed for me, as I always wanted to be independent from everyone. That’s why it was always very, very difficult for me to ask for help—I always did everything on my own. And asking someone for money for myself- That was just completely out of the question 🙈. (As it later turned out, I completely take after my grandmother in this—she’s exactly the same now when it comes to this 🙈). So unless it was an absolute necessity, I never did it.

Especially asking my parents… that was a real lottery. Everything always depended on my mom’s mood. (By the way, did you know that children who grow up in an environment where everything revolves around their parents’ mood develop a sharp ability to notice even the slightest change in people’s emotions? They constantly try to make sure that everyone around them is happy, because only then can they breathe a sigh of relief, feeling it’s their duty to please everyone. ((Unfortunately, I still live this way. I’m working on learning a new way of life, but I’ve always been and still am a “mom” to everyone—I take care of people, look after them, help them, so I regularly hear from different people - Nastya stop, relax THINK ABOUT YOURSELF ENOOOOOOOOUGH and stuff like that 😅🙈

The downside of this is that people like me completely ignore themselves, their own needs and desires, and live only for others. I used to think that was my purpose in life, that I was just born this way. But my psychologists keep insisting that it’s not normal and that it’s actually childhood trauma turned into a psychological disorder 🤣.

So, there was even a time when I started hanging out with a not-so-great group of guys who taught me how to steal from stores. And yes, I’m ashamed of it. And you’ll never guess what I stole! While the others were stealing clothes, chocolate, beer, and other typical stuff—I WAS STEALING BULGARIAN PEPPERS! 🤣 Yes, yes. My mom often asked me to pick up something from the store on my way home, but I had no money, so I had to steal whatever she asked for. (Of course, they later found out when they started wondering where I was getting money from if they weren’t giving me any 🤣).

And I kept stealing… until I got caught. But you’ll hear all about that embarrassment in my next chapter. 😅

Also my mom started renovating our house, and for many years, we lived in construction (the beautiful yard you see in my Instagram stories from my house in Dnipro is the result of my parents’ years of hard work!). Almost all of my mom’s money went into renovations. She also bought a house for her mom near ours, just a 10-minute walk away, and my grandmother finally moved to the city 🤪

As for photography, now my parents could afford to pay for good retouching courses for me with different instructors. Later, I began studying at an academy with a photography and retouching teacher. At 16, I had my first photography exhibition—but I’ll talk about that later 😏

Basically, I dove headfirst into learning photography and never stopped! I kept getting better and better, experimenting with different genres and styles. But I want to show you everything in order, so today, you’ll see my photos from my first year with my camera—the cringiest ones, of course 🤣 As you can probably guess, my very first shots were absolutely terrible. The ones that are at least a little better were taken a bit later 😅

Next month, I’ll show you my work from when I was 16, which includes another level of cringe and even some wedding shoots 🤣