How it all started

It is so hard to put your whole life under a microscope and even harder to be the one looking through the lens

I am an atypical person. Unlike many, I can lay my life on the table and analyse it. I am not saying that it's easy peasy, but it is possible for me to do that. It took a lot of time alone with nothing to do but think about "what I did wrong" to be able to do that now. I can see right through me and find what triggers my bad habbits, my blockages, my negative emotions, my involuntary reactions... I can see it all clearly.

I grew up in a small town, surrounded by 3 other children from the neighbourhood. Because of the big age gap (4-5 years younger/older), for the most part I interacted with only one of them, so I grew up to be much of a loner. The kids from school lived too far to be alowed to meet them so during winter and cold days I was to see kids at school and during summer - this one kid in my front yard. Even with that one I wasn't alowed to spend too much time out and I wasn't alowed to bring anyone inside my home. I was supposed to listen and obey the rules that were made on the go.

I hated kindergarten and school was a place where I always felt tormented by "the way things were supposed to happen just because". I never felt like fitting in. Because I wasn't talking loud enough and I was a short kid, people were barely noticing I was there. There were also times when I was in the center of my classmates' atention, but as the one that's being bullyed and mocked for different traits I had or did not have and other stupid things. I would come home crying, telling my mother what had happened, but all I ever got was the usual "suck it up". Not in these exact words, but with no solution or advice but the encouragement to ignore the kids untill they don't find mocking me to be fun anymore. It did hurt and I felt hopeless, unprotected and left out in the open. My parents loved me and still do, but what they felt like a good way to raise a kid, was careless to me. By the time I was a teenager, I stopped telling them when I needed help because it felt useless, so why bother when I knew I was the one ending up hurt more?

In those years I started to connect more with the sisters that lived two houses down the road who, because the older one was 5 years older than me and already in college, showed me some rock music. Yes, A. was a rocker now. She introduced me to HIM at first, but it was not enough to make me identify with this gender yet. Still, I enjoyed it truly. I was listening to Mtv like an addict to explore this new found realm that made me think there is more to life than bullies and parents that wanted me to be a good kid and not question anything. It was one spring day that I heard for the first time two local alternative rock bands named Praf in Ochi and AB4. That moment it was like an epiphany. Suddenly I knew who I was and what I wanted. That was also the time I bought my first album and it is now one of my most precious possesions. I would listen to that album day and night and feel it to my bones.Later I was introduced by A. to Poison by Alice Cooper and Smoke on the water by Deep Purple and Stairway to heaven by the Led Zeppelin and a few more. I would listend to these songs on and on for hours. They were my knights in shining armour.

It was the sudden transformation from the kid that was told even what to wear or else "we will be in trouble", to the kid that wanted to express himself and wear what made him feel confident, and listen to the music that made him happy and hang out with likeminded kids. There were intense fights over what I wanted to wear and where I wanted to go out and the people I wanted to hang out with.

My parents did not understand what was happening to me and blamed it on hormones, bad influence and hell knows what unearthly force. I did not want to obey and I wanted to be my own person. I was wearing shirts and blouses under t-shirts, I was wearing black and I was on the right path. There was a compromise: I was alowed to wear bluses under the t-shirts only if they did not have skulls on them. I was still ignored and mocked by classmates, but for being the weirdo that listens to rock and looks sketchy. This time was the first time I did not care anymore because I knew who I was and I did not need any aproval.

While in the eight grade, I was with my parents out for the yearly town's celebration. I don't know by what miracle they started to be ok to buy me rock items like leather bracelets and jeans chains. That was the first time I owned a band t-shirt, a black Nightwish one. It was fucking big for me, but I wore it for about ten years when it started to have little holes in it.

I was always told that this was just a phase and with maturity, I will turn into the person my mother always wanted to be: a nice girl with long curly hair wearing colorful dresses and sometimes high heels when the gathering requires it, to paint my face in happy colors, to smile and to never under any circumstance contradict her in public.

I got to college and my wildest act was to wear cargo pants and the Nightwish t-shirt. It was amazing because I met so many people with whom I connected, but I lost it because I was not alowed to hang out with them after class like them and you know, friendships need work. They were a whole new breed and they had blue or pink painted hair and skateboards and piercings and black make-up and I wanted that in my life, to my mother's shock. She kept dreaming that by some miracle I would change everything for pink. Despite the fact that I wished for a piercing, a tatto and crazy colored hair, I never got it. I never had money from my parents and they would never agree to finance such "stupid idea". They however bought me a skateboard. This was the time I discovered Nirvana and oh my how connected I felt to their songs.

From all these things that happened in a certain wrong way and others I did not mention, I remained with a difficulty in interacting with people and a strong need not to have to go to work everyday in an office full of people, but rather meet new ones and be a freelancer.

There once was music and it's powers were unimaginable

Now I'm 27 and I am still listening to rock ,I am still wearing black. Now, woken up after a brain wash that convinced me there is a certain thing for a certain age, music is still helping me cope with negative emotions and is still there to help me enjoy things. Is helping me stay focused and is inspiring me. I am going to make that tattoo I always dreamed of, I am going to make that piercing I was thinking of for the last 10 years and I am going to buy those bands t-shirts everybody told me are for immatures and teens. All that because I have unfinished business. Not because that was a phase for me growing up that I did not get to complete, but because this is who I am and I forgot.


I will leave this guy's speech who's band I am going to see in August in Budapest. It is about hard work, perseverence, selfesteem and it is inspiring and encouraging.  I am a fan.