Know Me Better

Childhood (for as long as it lasted)

This is a short story/article about my happy childhood, interspersed with traumas and intense experiences. I am absolutely not writing this with a desire for anyone to pity me. There is truly no reason for that. I was a happy child. I lacked nothing. And the traumas I earned made me tougher, and for that, I can only be grateful.

I remember the period up to my sixth year only in fragments. I am pretty sure I have some memories of sleeping in a baby crib, but I was less than a year old then, and there is no way for me to confirm it.

The sixth year was the first turning point in my childhood and in my life. One day, I was supposed to go visit my grandmother with my father. I was sitting on a chair, and when I stood up, I just fell to the floor. Every attempt to lean on my legs and walk was unsuccessful. A visit to the doctor and the diagnosis – Guillain-Barré syndrome. As a layman in medicine, I can only say that it is a virus that attacks various parts of the body, and in my case, the myelin sheath around the muscle tissue in my legs. It was incredible luck that the doctor I went to for the exam had encountered one such case during her studies and was able to recognize what it was.

The prognosis was positive. Six months of medical treatments and exercises, and a guaranteed recovery. It was presented to me that from that moment on, I should never receive any vaccine again because any drop in immunity at that level could lead to the return of the disease. I think that is exaggerated, or she meant extreme drops in immunity, because here I am, thirty years later, I have been getting sick, a drop in immunity was a logical sequence, but I never had any problems. But I listened to the doctor and never received any vaccine again.

The recovery was not easy. I remember doctors pricking my leg with a million needles to determine the nerve reaction in my legs. That is a pain you do not want to experience. If you have, you know what I am talking about. My best friend in the institute, where I was recovering at first, was a boy who claimed that a truck ran over his arm. Back then, as a young, naive kid, I believed him. Later I realized there was no running over, but his entire arm was covered in high-degree burns. I still remember that redness.

Another traumatic scene was when they were taking me for an exam in a clinic, and in the hallway, we had to pass through, I saw the back of a doctor leaning over a child. I don’t know what he was doing to him, but I remember that child’s screaming.

Those six months of recovery also passed. I learned to walk again. That period of life was over.

But that was not all. Oh, no. Living in Yugoslavia at that time was a very specific experience. Emerging from the communist system (not really, it just had a different name) required some reforms that are never easy. But reforms were not the main problem. The country was literally falling apart. Already fragmented into several smaller countries, it still had internal problems. In the early 90s, civil wars, then some apparent truce. All the way until 1999. That is when the story started that the Nato pact might bomb us. The reason: Slobodan Milošević (you have probably heard of him) and his politics, and accusations that he committed atrocities against Albanians in Kosovo. That is the official reason. The unofficial one, which we all found out about a bit later, was not that at all, but the separation of Kosovo from the territory of Serbia and building a military base there. Bondsteel (maybe you have heard of that too). Why building a military base? Because of the danger of Russian influence in that part of Europe.

Anyway, to get to the point. On March 24, 1999, in the evening hours, air raid sirens went off. Seventeen countries sent planes that bombed the entire country for 78 days. Back then, it was called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. As a ten-and-a-half-year-old kid, I did not understand the scale of it. That was left to my parents. To worry, to not disturb my lightheartedness. But I wasn’t completely unaware of the situation. I just wasn’t afraid because looking at my parents, who always seemed calm and composed, I had no fear that something bad would happen. And I survived. Some didn’t. That’s how it is in war. I remember going with my father and his friend one morning to look at a building hit by bombs. Yes, it looked like 9/11, with the difference that the building was still standing in its place. It was renovated later and now stands next to another one built after it, and it irresistibly and somewhat eerily reminds one of those two in New York. Sometimes I wonder how it will end up one day, just like those two.

Now I would like to describe those slightly more cheerful traumas. As a kid, I was naive to a level that bordered on stupidity. My cousins on my aunt’s side loved to scare me with talking dolls, but in reality, they were the ones talking. Also, I remember a video clip - I don’t remember what it’s called, but the scene was such that a bathtub was shown with blood starting to gush out of the drain. Since the movie was black and white, it gave it an extra creepiness. I was naive, but that is how my love for the horror genre was born. Yes, horror was my favorite in childhood.

With this, I come to the end of this article and a small insight into my childhood. Once again, I note, my goal was not to complain. Everything that happened made me tougher and made me who I am now. Smarter, tougher, and less naive.

The next Know Me Better posts will certainly be more cheerful. In the end, for my childhood, I can say this – It wasn’t always easy, but it was always nice.

SciFiVirteleon