My most cherished childhood memory.

   I thought that I would write another journal prompt-inspired post, this time based on a prompt from a book called 412 Journaling Exercises and Prompts for Personal Growth by Meredith Lane. I’ve actually already sort of used this prompt in my private diary in the past, but thought I’d also write about it on here, and the prompt goes as follows: 

   Describe your most cherished childhood memory. 

   When I was writing about this prompt in my diary, I found it more difficult than I would have thought it could be to think about the one, MOST cherished memory from my childhood. I could think of a lot of happy and pleasant and all sorts of positive moments from my childhood, but it wasn’t like right when I saw this question something would spring to my mind as being the MOST. I of course eventually did come up with something that felt like it could come up this criterion, but I assumed that the fact it took me so long was due to my brain being at fault, because apparently our brains are a lot better at retaining and remembering the yucky stuff that happened to us – provided it’s not so very yucky that the brain would rather get rid of it and suppress it – rather than the good stuff. Before I wrote this post, I decided to ask my Mum about her happy childhood memories. Partly because that’s what I very often do before or during writing posts like this, because we usually end up having long discussions on the topics of my posts and I end up seeing it from an additional angle, but also because I was just curious. My Mum has often told me that she feels like she doesn’t remember a whole lot out of her childhood and has a lot of gaps, and while I don’t think she would call her childhood unhappy and I don’t think one could call it so objectively, most of what she has shared with me about it sounds just a little bit unpleasant to me. The times in which her childhood happened to be – communism – her extreme timidity and anxiousness as a child, and her dad, who in all her stories, especially the ones she told me when I was a child, sounded extremely stern and even a bit scary to me – an ever-looming presence of someone who is physically present most of the time yet hardly speaking to his children at all, and if so, usually to scold or punish them. – It was all the more scary for me that he is so different now as a grandfather, and a better father to his adult children as well, and that extreme difference was unfathomable for me. So when I asked her this, she ended up having the same problem and couldn’t come up with anything specific for a long time. So I asked her whether she thinks it’s because she doesn’t have a lot of happy memories from her childhood. She said that no, it’s probably just that she doesn’t really dwell on her memories so much and has always lived in the moment for the most part, and also that while she has many nice memories from her childhood and remembers it fondly as a whole, she couldn’t really think of anything that would particularly stand out. So I told her that I had the same problem when trying to answer that question in my diary and that it took me a long time to come up with something, to which she reacted with: “Oh, but what sort of childhood you had, it was a nightmare!” Well, I don’t think so at all. I definitely couldn’t call it happy if I were to be truthful, but I think a nightmare would be not only a huge overstatement and taking all the good things for granted. And that was when it dawned on me that the reason why we find it so difficult to think about the best memories from our childhoods is exactly this – that our childhoods weren’t a nightmare. – If they were, it would be easier to think of the few situations that stood out as a lot better than what we’d be used to our life being like as a whole. From what I’ve noticed, people who have gone through extreme poverty, extreme trauma or other major adverse experiences in childhood, often tend to have a handful or even just one memory from their childhood that stands out in their minds as being a lot better than everything else what they’ve been used to. Having a full, warm meal, or someone treating them better than what they’re used to at home, or having a fun outing at school etc. For us, most people these are normal things! Still much appreciated, but absolutely normal. So even though we have many experiences of happy times in our childhood, they naturally don’t stand out so much, because it was normal to have a lot of yummy food, presents for every birthday, playing silly games etc. Etc. Whatever an average kid does. My Mum agreed with me and said that rather than having any particular memories that would stand out very much, when she looks back at her childhood she just collectively remembers all the fun she had with her siblings, the constant presence of her mum at home and how cosy it was, spending time with her best friend etc. Nothing spectacular. It’s quite similar for me, and I wonder how it is for you. 

   Nevertheless, as I said, I did manage to come up with a memory, well, a few memories, that I guess kind of do stand out, or at least based on some things I’ve later experienced and little cues I’ve had in relation to them I believe that they must really stand out for my subconscious for some reason, and in this post, I’ll reminisce a bit about them. 

   They are memories of  the few times when I got to ride home from school in my Dad’s tanker lorry. That was not something that happened often or regularly,  because  generally tanker drivers are not supposed to have passengers, unless it’s a fellow driver and they work shifts. Or at least that’s the case with delivering fuel which is what my Dad does. Officially, anyone who is to ride a tanker has to go through some kind of training so that they’ll know what to do should there be an explosion or something. However, the hours and days of my Dad’s work were always rather unpredictable, and he couldn’t always organise it so that he’d be off work to pick me up from school together with Mum the, hm, conventional way. Especially if something unexpected came up like I was sick or whatever. And Mum was back then too chicken to drive four hours to my school and back on her own. So what they’d sometimes do was they’d take me from school a bit earlier when it fit Dad. Or other times Mum would ask someone from our extended family to go with her and drive, and people often very kindly did it. But there were a couple times when the most viable option was for Dad to take me in the lorry, when he happened to be working somewhere in the area or driving nearby anyway and could logistically squeeze in picking me up. I also think that the restrictions around that must have been a bit different when I was a young child, or perhaps for some reason there was a difference between how different companies where he worked handled it, because when Olek and me were little it would happen slightly more often that he would take us and/or Mum for rides when he had to go somewhere nearby and one time he even took Mum and Olek for quite a long trip. 

   I don’t remember now how many times exactly I rode with him from school in the lorry, maybe three or four, but each time it happened I remember being extremely excited and euphoric about it. In my mind, it had a whole lot of pros to it, though I’m pretty sure that if I had to ride back to school with him in the lorry, I wouldn’t have quite so exciting memories from it, as that would likely mean that we wouldn’t even be able to say goodbye to each other properly and he wouldn’t be able to stay there at all and would have to leave right away. As it was, it was absolutely thrilling. It was usually something that was organised last minute so was a total surprise for me, and while I generally am not a fan of surprises, I was always happy to hear about one like this. Most of the time, particularly if you left school for some official holiday break rather than for a weekend or some personal reasons, the whole procedure of leaving could take really long and I really didn’t like it. Sometimes there were parent-teacher meetings, or parent-group staff meetings or other stuff like that, sometimes if it was something like the end of school year or Christmas break or something like that there would be a school play, and loads of talking and peopling and what not. Especially that my Mum often did feel the need to talk with my staff or teachers a lot, even without a special opportunity, and it was very much mutual because most people really like my Mum and could talk for hours with her. But if I left with my Dad in his lorry, it didn’t matter if it was the end of a school year or whatever, my Dad had a schedule that he had to stick to, so I had to pack in advance, he would usually inform everyone, including myself, at very short notice that he’s going to pick me up and I was to be waiting for him and as soon as he arrived we’d leave. Even if he didn’t have to count his minutes at work, he values his time very much and is a rather impatient person, and he doesn’t have the gift of the gab like my Mum does, nor the gift to listen. And it was just so unusual. No other kid, at least of those that I knew, had a dad who would pick them up in a lorry. So I felt super proud. 

   The first time it happened, I was in the nursery/preschool/whatever you’d call it, so I could have been around six or seven (yes, that blind nursery worked a bit differently and children there were older than you’d normally expect in a nursery, otherwise you’d have to send three-year-olds to a boarding school 😀 ). I believe I had to have an endocrinologist’s appointment and the easier way for my parents to organise transportation home for me was for Dad to pick me up in the lorry on his way back from work, so he didn’t have any fuel in there anymore, as he was meant to go through Warsaw anyway and my school was near Warsaw. He was only able to do this at night though, so I was to wait for him to come. I was usually excited at the mere thought of going home, but being able to stay up very late (which was something I was very much used to doing at home but not really able to do at preschool) and then drive through half of the country in the middle of the night had me properly thrilled. As a kid, I really loved riding long distances, learning about names of different towns and villages, the funnier the better, and, most of all, finding out what different radio stations were out there in different parts of the country. I remember that it all felt very unusual, when I was allowed to stay up, even after our regular staff left and the nightshift lady came  and all the other children fell asleep. I was quietly playing on my bed, with all my bags already packed, and listening to something on headphones and the wait felt really long, but at some point the nightshift lady came in and told me that my Dad had arrived. To my surprise, there was also some other guy there who turned out to be his colleague whom I didn’t know before, and I got a feeling that he ended up really liking me. I also remember that he gave me loads of oranges along the way and kept asking me if I wasn’t sleepy, as I suppose he found that weird that a kid my age wouldn’t be at such time. My Dad was driving, his colleague was sitting in the passenger seat, and I was on the bed. I kept chatting to them about all sorts of things that happened to me at school and whatever my weird Bibiel brain made up and they were laughing. At some point Dad told me that he had a surprise for me and gave me a chocolate bar called Jacek, this is a Polish chocolate bar which I believe is no longer even produced, but as far as I remember it was a type of nougat-flavoured bar. That was the first time I had it and before that I didn’t even know that  such a chocolate bar called Jacek existed and after that I only had it twice. Anyway, those of you who know about my Jackophilia can probably imagine that my euphoria was sky high at that point. I was all like: “WOw, world, people, hear me! There’s a chocolate bar called Jacek, have you ever heard anything more interesting than this?!” At some point though I guess I did end up feeling sleepy ‘cause the next thing I remember my Dad’s colleague had magically disappeared and we were quite close to home. We arrived very early in the morning and Mum was still asleep. Dad told me that it’s a surprise for Mum and that she doesn’t know I’m coming, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t the case but he just wanted to make it fun or something. So he went to load our furnace and told me to ring the doorbell so that Mum would think I came home by myself, and initially she was indeed quite surprised to see me there. 

   The second time I don’t really remember much about, other than I rode with my Dad alone and I think I was in primary by then and I sat next to him for some part of the journey and we were listening to Radio Bis. One incident from that journey that I remember clearly was that at some point the police were checking Dad’s car and I had to hide under blankets and duvets so that they wouldn’t see me. I found that extremely exciting and fun, far more than my Dad for sure, and I remember that it reminded me of how my gran told me that her siblings hid her in some sort of a container full of potatoes during WWII when she was four so that a German soldier wouldn’t see her and when they ended up not seeing me I felt like some sort of great hero. 

   The third time happened much later, I think when I was in my early teens. I remember I was having a properly rotten time at school in all sorts of ways for several weeks as well as a lot of anxiety and when I was coming back to the boarding part, or  however it’s called in English, after classes, and was thinking how could it would be if my Mum could make me a surprise and visit me this weekend or something. Well, then I had lunch, went to my room and was about to start doing my homework but looked at my phone before that and saw that I had several missed calls from Mum. When I called back she said that she and Dad are in his lorry and that I should pack my most essential things because they’d be for me shortly and take me home for the weekend. For a while I really couldn’t believe it. But they did come and I went home with them, despite there wasn’t really such need as there weren’t any holidays approaching and I didn’t have any pressing reason to come home like a medical appointment or something. That trip home was a bit less unusual and surreal because there was Mum, but still, I really enjoyed it as a whole. 

   And the last time that I remember riding back from school in Dad’s lorry was almmost at the end of my stay in that school, I guess I could be around sixteen or something. I can’t remember what was exactly the reason for that, but it had to be something important because I stayed home for a really long time. It was March-April time so it could be Easter, but our Easter breaks weren’t normally particularly long so perhaps I got sick or something, but I don’t remember getting sick during that break and I certainly wasn’t sick with anything when going home. I just remember that, again, I was having a really shitty day at school, though I don’t remember why exactly. I only know that there was some goalball tournament going on  that day or other sport event (goalball is a team sport for the blind) which I didn’t take part in myself but everyone was watching it anyway, and I was quite bored and it was dragging on for ages, and I was making use of all that time by ruminating on whatever shitty stuff was going on. Then I come back and go with my life as normal and at some point when I was in my room talking to my roommate my Dad called me. It was rather unusual for him to call me on his own accord because it was me who had free unlimited calling time set up with him so me calling him paid off more, and we rarely talked in the middle of the day like that unless I was either really bored or had some difficult Geography assignment. So I answered, a little surprised, and he said he’s going to be here literally in five minutes so I better get ready. I was absolutely euphoric. I went to one of our group staff to share the good news and asked her to help me pack but she wouldn’t even believe me. 😀 But I somehow managed to convince her that I was not making it up so she helped me and as soon as I was packed, my Dad was waiting downstairs. AFter the boring and extremely understimulating morning at school, now I was all super giddy and jittery and extremely happy. I could sit next to my Dad high up in the lorry and we chatted about all sorts of stuff. It was already after our relationship has started gradually straining more and more so we weren’t getting along anymore as well as we did when I was younger, but we could still chat about a lot of stuff and still can despite the strain and stuff. I was at first a bit stressed when he told me that we’ll actually need to sleep in the lorry overnight, as I didn’t know how I’d manage with stuff like showering and the like, but in the end I decided, oh well, I don’t even have to do it, I’ll shower when I’ll get home. I would much rather go home straight away than sleep in the car and wait SO long to get to my beautiful little Bibiel room, but in a way sleeping there was also kind of exciting. Dad slept on the passenger’s seat and left his bed for me. But while his sleeping conditions were probably even less enviable, at least he was sleeping, because I guess my Dad can fall asleep anywhere if he’s sufficiently tired. I meanwhile, couldn’t sleep almost at all. I kept wondering how anyone can manage to sleep on such narrow, small bed, if I, being fairly small and thin myself, felt like I was being squeezed between the bed and the ceiling and could barely move comfortably. I wondered how my Dad’s current shift colleague, who is quite obese, can get in and out of here and doesn’t get stuck. All sorts of vehicles were either driving past us, or standing near us with their engines running and once in a while people would be yelling something to each other. And, of course, my Dad was snoring, as if he was competing with all those engines or something. I’ve always liked some background noise while sleeping, but perhaps not SO much. I was also stilll fulll of beans and excitement. So rather than sleeping, I was reading Emily of New Moon, or just thinking about all sorts of things and generally feeling quite happy about life at that very moment. I think I did eventually get some sleep but felt very zombified when Dad woke me up. Which, with help of a few coffees, didn’t last long. (Gosh, I wish I could still have a few coffees in the morning and feel normal afterwards, I miss coffee so much!) We had some quick breakfast and then drove homeward, but first Dad had to tank a barge (it’s entirely possible that I’m using wrong English words here in relation to the whole fuel delivery stuff btw, I’m clueless about it even in Polish). So once we got there, he took me inside of it, and I got to wait for him in a room while he was filling it up and what not. I had my Braille-Sense with me and was reading something on it, and one guy who was working on the barge came over and started chatting to me and wanted to know what this thing was and how it worked, so I kindly explained to him the workings of a Braille-Sense for like half an hour, surprised that he has so much time on his hands at work, and ever so slightly annoyed that he won’t leave me alone to read in peace. He seemed quite impressed though. And then when my Dad was done we drove to where Mum was supposed to pick us up and she picked us up and we rode home. 

   I also rode many more times in my Dad’s various lorries for much shorter distances, but still long enough to feel thrilling. Now however I haven’t done it in years, despite he sometimes asks me, I guess just for the sake of asking, whether I’d like to, when it’s possible for him to do so. But I never do it, as we no longer really have the sort of relationship we had when I was a small kid. Things have changed a lot, and both of us have changed a lot, and the prospect of it no longer feels exciting at all. 

   When thinking about home rides from school with my Dad, however, one more thing always springs to my mind, despite it has nothing to do with lorries, but is a nearly equally pleasant memory. Namely, there was one such time in our family history when my Dad came to take me home from school by train. Unfortunately I no longer remember why exactly he had to do it by train, why not by car. Perhaps it was broken or something? What I do know is that my Mum had to have kidney stones removed and was in hospital, and that was why she, or they both, couldn’t take me home. That was a year before Sofi was born so I must have been nine years old. Ironically, it was Mother’s Day, and our boarding school group staff was planning some sort of meeting with parents and some sort of Mother’s Day celebration I suppose as well. I knew about it in advance that my Dad would come for me on his own and I found the whole idea hilarious that he would be sitting there in a chair, eating cake (he hates cakes and almost everything sweet), watching some sort of Mummy’s Day play and listening to ALL the stuff our boarding school staff had to say, when normally he could barely keep track of in which grades me and Olek were and how old we were and stuff. 😀 Also the idea of my Dad picking me up on his own by train and me coming back home with him by train felt absolutely weird and kind of funny, as I’d always only seen him as the driver, the one who is in charge of things, and you’re hardly in charge of things on a train. So he came, and I’m pretty sure that his patience was put to a great test, because, at least as far as I can tell, that whole meeting thing was really long. Until the last minute, I – who, as you already know, also don’t like such long-winded stuff – was hoping for his temper to break and for him to have a mini meltdown like he often does when Mum’s around and sulkily grumpily leave with me because he ain’t got all day or at least hastily explain to someone that he has to go to be in time for his train, but no. He sat there like a proper daddy, or should we rather say mummy, perfectly calm and collected. I was really relieved when we finally got to go, and I’m sure so was he. The journey wasn’t as very exciting as all the lorry ones, but it was really fun nonetheless. I just remember feeling very excited and happy about it and that I could travel by train with Dad, but no clearer details really. The only thing I remember more clearly was that at some point there was a guy going round selling light beer and I asked my Dad if light beer is anything different than just beer and if not than why call it light beer, and we ended up having a whole discussion about beers, not just light beer, and how different beers are called, and then for some weird reasons we went on to cheeses and their names, but I have no recollection of how the transition from beers to cheeses took place. 😀 Sadly, Dad was not able to provide me much information on what the differences between all them cheeses were in taste. 

   So that’s it, these are my most cherished childhood memories, at least those that I remember and that came to my mind first. 

   How about yours? Do you have any that stand out, or is it also difficult for you to come up with anything? Do you agree with my theory that people with more or less normal or at least not extremely traumatic childhoods have less of an ability or perhaps need to cherish good childhood memories because they have loads of them compared with people with very traumatising childhoods? Would love to hear thoughts, and memories. 🙂 

Question of the day.

What is your earliest childhood memory?

My answer:

My earliest memory is from when I was two years old, which some people find strange or impossible, claiming that you can only have real memories from the age of 3, but I believe that when they’re strong and emotionally intense memories, you can remember things that happened earlier, plus I guess everyone is a bit different and it must depend a lot on an individual. Anyway, my earliest memory is about when Olek was born. My Dad and me went to visit Mum in the hospital, and the first thing I remember from that was when we were in the lift and I was a little bit scared of the sensation of it moving. I still avoid lifts if only it’s possible and reasonable, even escalators, because they make me feel dizzy and floaty in an awful way and mess with my vestibular system though I’m pretty sure it was a lot worse when I was younger. Then we went to the room where my Mum was and I remember that she was really weak or something and kind of wasn’t herself really, actually at the time I think I thought she was really sleepy. My Mum had a C-section so she certainly could still be groggy after that. Olek wasn’t in there. Mum let me feel her tummy and I remember it really shocked me and made me feel quite awful. I don’t really remember or know now what exactly was going on with her, was it her stitches that she showed me and my brain exaggerated that, or something else, but I quite clearly remember a HUGE needle sticking out of her tummy and the thing overall looked quite raw and not quite like what I expected I think. And I got ann idea into my head, quite a logical one for a kid I guess, that it was my baby brother who was to blame for that. I must have said it out loud because I remember my Dad laughing and saying what a monster Olek must be. I felt really sorry for Mum. Then I don’t remember anything else, but later on I often thought that this first impression of Olek that I got, before even actually meeting him, could have influenced my later attitude towards him and I felt guilty because of that and still sort of do, though these days this is not the sole reason for why I feel a sense of guilt in relation to him, but that’s a whole different topic. Anyway, when we were little kids, I was really nasty for him. I don’t really remember that very clearly but my parents say I could just come over to him all of a sudden and start frantically bang him with something over the head or bite him really badly, or I wouldn’t let him play with my toys and generally rejected him all the time. I do remember having a kind of feeling of aversion or something towards him and like I didn’t really like him, and that I was very fickle with him. Sometimes I played together with him and we had a lot of fun, but other times I wouldn’t let him play with me. We shared the same bedroom (actually at the time our whole family had just one, huge, open area that we slept in) and sometimes I would initiate some play, because I was rarely sleepy when I should be and as a toddler always got a huge energy shot towards the evenings and it was the best time for playing for me, and he happily joined in with that, or we just talked and laughed like crazy because everything’s always most hilarious when it’s time to sleep. And then in the middle of that I’d suddenly just turn my back on him for no apparent reason and play by myself or start doing something else that I wouldn’t include him in and I acted like I was cross with him or something. Or we’d be talking and suddenly I’d start acting royally haughty and like I was deadly bored and be like: “I don’t wanna talk to you”. Or if he tried to talk to me but I didn’t feel like it, I’d also say something like that, no matter how much the poor kid would try to get my attention. Thinking back to that, I am actually a bit surprised that he wasn’t similarly nasty to me in return, as kids usually are. He’d still make efforts to be able to play with me no matter how jerky I was with him, and no matter how often I’d keep rejecting him he’d continue to try to connect with me and was always very protective of me as a kid, it looked as if my attitude wasn’t even affecting him at all. Sure he liked a bit of sibling rivalry, and would be mischievous sometimes and piss me off totally deliberately, but he was mischievous with everyone so it wasn’t anything specifically directed at me, and I think a lot of kids, if they were treated like that by an older sibling, would at some point just shrug and let go, or start acting the same as their sibling.

How about your earliest memory? 🙂

Question of the day.

What do you miss the most about your childhood?

My answer:

As much as I never looked forward to being an adult and even now still don’t like it and find it kind of intimidating, I can’t say I miss my childhood very much either. Usually, I guess when people say they miss their childhood or being a child in general, they miss some carefree feeling that they remember from that time, or a sense of safety or something like that, perhaps less awareness about things going on around them. I don’t really remember any particular carefreeness that I’d feel as a child, I think I must have been born a professional ruminator ’cause I never felt very carefree for a longer period of time as a kid. 😀 There was always something I was stressed or worried about and while I often tried to distract myself from that, it only worked temporarily.

I think if I do miss something, it would be the very early childhood, below age 5. I remember that when I was a teenager I often missed being a very small child or a baby, which probably says something about my emotional maturity. 😀 Not that I have many memories from that time that I’d miss, I just suppose it must be the nicest part of one’s life, when one doesn’t have much of an idea about anything. And most of the memories that I do have from that time are indeed quite happy. Also I’m plain curious because I know from my own experience with myself, and from what my family tell me, that I was quite a lot different personality-wise as a young child. I was definitely a really really weird kid and had my own little, freaky world which was very difficult for complete outsiders to grasp, just as it was difficult for me to grasp that other people don’t necessarily think the way I do and often had no freakin’ clue what I was even talking about, yet when I was like four, or even six, I was a lot more outgoing and socially capable, or even as my Mum claims “happy”, than by the time I was eight, and then since about being 7-8 years old, perhaps earlier, I was gradually kind of withdrawing. As a small kid, I was certainly shy and might have struggled a lot especially with initiating contact with people, but I was quite sociable and when I felt safe with people I always felt very happy to have everyone’s full attention. Most people liked me and I liked people if they didn’t seem scary, I could bond with nice people really quickly. At that time I had more trouble relating to my peers though, which my Mum was initially rather worried about. Some people still can’t get over it that that little Bibiel is gone. And no, thankfully it’s not my Mum. And while I believe there might have been quite a few things that contributed to this gradual yet at the same time seemingly abrupt change, it could be quite interesting to go back to that time and figure out with my current brain how exactly did it happen that that little Bibiel had left the stage. Also it was when I was a small child that my synaesthesia was developing from all sorts of sensory experiences I had, and I sometimes think I’d like to go through that process yet again but with a bit more consciousness to observe it critically, it would be really cool. What I mean is that, for example, a lot of my tactile synaesthetic associations involve stuff that I think I touched or felt as a child, like some of my toys. With some of my synaesthetic associations, I can only feel the overall shape of something, or the texture, but not much detail. And, while I’m sure that some of my tactile associations my brain has just made up, I’d like to go back to those objects or other things that existed for real and see how they actually looked like in full and what they were, and find out why I synaesthetically associate with them what I do. Like, why do i associate my Dad’s name – Jacek – with something as random as a screw cover? I don’t even know if that’s what it’s called in English. 😀 The round, ring-like metal thing that you can put on a screw. I often liked to play in my Dad’s garage, where he always fixed all kinds of things, and I played with all sorts of weird things, and I’m pretty sure that that’s how a screw cover (and lots of other similar things) ended up among my tactile synaesthetic experiences, but why is it associated specifically with Jacek and not any other word or sound? Perhaps someone, like my Mum, came into the garage and said my Dad’s name while I held it? I really like the name Jacek, plus of course it’s myy Dad’s name, so I have a lot of emotional connection to it, but I have none to screw covers. When I once revealed this to one sister at nursery (the blind school I went to was led partly by nuns), she got quite indignant that I have such odd associatioons with my own Dad. Except obviously it’s not what I associate my Dad with, but the sound and sort of overall vibe of his name. This in no way affects what I think of either my Dad, or any other Jaceks, it’s just a separate thing.

Other than that, I guess I could say I miss how, in retrospect, the world at large seemed kind of better when I was a child. Obviously it’s very subjective because I knew very little about it. But when I think about the world and various aspects of it as it was when I was a kid, vs now, it feels like those 15-20 years ago, life in this world in general was a lot better and more interesting. It feels like less crazy shit was happening in the world, and there were SO many cool things that are now a thing of the past. Think Polish Radio BIS, for example. I’ll never get over this loss, even though I’m sure there’s a lot of idealisation involved on my end. 😀

Also one thing not really related to my childhood as such, but that did happen during my childhood – I miss Sofi when she was very little. –
I miss the time when she was still a baby and a toddler, and all sorts of funny and cute things she did and said that she now doesn’t even remember, only from what we’ve told her.

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

What should exist, but doesn’t?

My answer:

Some kind of brain cloud or something like that. I mean cloud as in a server. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has such ideas. Plus something that would make the integration between the human brain and such cloud possible, of course. I’m not sure how exactly it would work in detail as I have little idea about such things, and this is probably not realistic to be a thing ever, but I’d like such a thing from which you could transfer things like information or skills to your brain so that it could process it and incorporate as part of what it knows and can do. Think about learning languages this way. 😀 There wouldn’t be any need for schooling or anything, you just sort of download whatever sets of skills and information you need and you’re ready to go and do your job. And also maybe we could incorporate new experiences this way without actually experiencing them physically so we’d know what different experiences feel like. But also, this cloud would be able to store all things that already are in your brain, if this is doable in any way, for example to somehow keep one’s memories in such a cloud and be able to retrieve them or something, for example when your physical brain gets amnesiac, or share them with people if you want. It would all be encrypted by default, and then when you’d die, you could state it in your will who, if anyone, do you want to inherit your brain legacy and people will gain access to whatever you let them have access to, or you can choose to have everything destroyed completely right in the moment when you die, or perhaps do some other things with it, like let your online brain copy keep floating there forever and think it’s immortal. I think it would be handy having a copy of your brain, and also having a sort of database from which you could pull things into your brain, but if such a thing would be realistic at all, I realise it’ll probably be also a great marketing/political toy and thus would have a lot of downsides to it in practice.

What is such a thing in your opinion? 🙂

Question of the day.

If you died today, how do you think you would be remembered?

My answer:

No clue really. It probably largely depends on the people who would remember me, as I don’t think it would be the same for everyone, but also I don’t think there would be all that much to remember as I haven’t made anything all that spectacular in life. Most people who know me in any way would probably just have memories of some situations from their lives featuring me or something. My immediate family, the ones who live with me, that is, would likely remember my linguophilia, weird brains and all the other weird/quirky/eccentric stuff they couldn’t wrap their brains around, everything to do with my blindness, as well as my sense of humour, gloominess and my obsession with Misha. My Mum could remember our multiple deep conversations and that I’ve always tried to listen to her or advise somehow, she actually says that now, ever since I’m at home, that is not at the boarding school anymore, at least she has someone to talk to regularly, so actually it’s quite possible she would remember that. Sofi would have a lot to remember. All our games and other fun times and stuff we were coming up with together, our inside jokes and neologisms, weird situations to do with me she couldn’t understand but always wanted and other things she couldn’t make sense of, our arguments, fights, misunderstandings and hurts, funny situations we had together, she would mostly remember the Bibiel me for sure. I’m not sure how Misha would remember me to be honest. Probably as the one who always called Mish Mish Mish especially at night and who always wanted him to sleep with her, but more importantly as an addition to the most peaceful room in the house where one could sleep for hours without being disturbed by anything, with the softest places to sleep on/in or hide, so that it was even difficult to choose where to sleep when he was very sleepy, and with an abundance of treats which somehow magically appeared whenever he said “Hhrrru?” 😀

Most other people who know me in person but not that well would probably remember me as that blind/disabled girl or something like that, and my extended family would probably also think of my disability first and foremost. Some would perhaps also think of some of my interests or quirks or some other of my less obvious, that is not instantly visible, traits, but I suppose mostly they’d think about what they could see. Some, like my grandma, would probably remember me from my early childhood, when I liked to sing, which she always recalls when talking to people about me. My grandma doesn’t have dementia or isn’t stuck in the past or anything like that, well, maybe she is slightly in a sentimental way, but I guess for some reason thinking about me from that period is easiest or most pleasant for her or something. My gran in turn, I believe would remember me in comparison to all the other blind people she has ever known or heard about.

My grandad, who is like close family to me… I don’t know what he would remember about me really. I never know what he thinks. Maybe he’d remember me simply as the person with whom it was the most comfortable to just be quiet and understand each other without words, that’s I think how I will remember him when he dies. Maybe also he’d remember that I was intelligent because he’s always very proud of me for that saying I’ve got that after him, or he’ll remember me as an “x-ray” as he calls me. 😀 Or someone who was worth his support. He’d probably also remember my interest in gem stones.

And online people, again, I guess it depends very much from where I know them or what we know about each other or what do we talk about etc. etc. but mostly they’d probably remember my blog, Misha, possibly also my languages or my fazas or something like that, that I had mental health issues since I am more open about them with people online than in real life, and that I was nice/a kind friend or something like this, intelligent and quirky/weird.

What do you think people would remember you for? 🙂

My first holiday/vacation.

As you guys know or may have noticed, I’ve recently been very big on all sorts of journaling prompts. Particularly in my private journal but on here as well. You also know that I know about most of my journaling prompts’ sources thanks to Astrid of A Multitude of Musings. One such source that I haven’t used for a blog post yet is an app for iOS called Paperblanks that I’ve been using for a while now in my personal writings and really like. So I thought I’d do a post loosely based on one of the prompts from this app on here today. It asks about the first vacation that you remember taking.

I said it’s going to be loosely based because I’m not sure what was exactly the first vacation I remember taking in my life, but one of the earliest holiday related memories that comes to my mind is about a little seaside village called Smołdzino, that we used to visit very regularly, pretty much every summer. I don’t remember the first time we went there and discovered that place, I don’t even know how we discovered it because it wasn’t a popular holiday destination then, and it all blends together in my brain, but I thought it could be fun to write a bit more in general about my memories from there and give you a feel of that very lovely place.

Smołdzino lies by the sea in Słowiński National Park, and is part of a nature reserve. So you can imagine it’s a very clean, quiet and peaceful place. I live in the north, and we have many more beaches closer to where we live, but since we’d discovered Smołdzino, for a long time, whenever we would have some more time on our hands, even a few days, we’d go there. It’s about 90 km (over 50 miles) from us, so it was always a longer trip than what me and Olek were used to going to the seaside. For me, that was both good and bad. I always found longer travels exciting, and the longer the better, but at the same time my vestibular system had a different view on this so I was generally rather ambivalent about the whole thing. 😀 I always looked forward to summer mostly for that particular reason, because I hoped we’d go to Smołdzino, as I really liked it there. After over an hour in the car, since it was a nature reserve, you had to leave it about four kilometres from the beach and walk the rest of the way with all your belongings, of which we usually took a lot with us, on foot. It was typically mid July or so, and thus could be very hot (one year I remember it being about 35 degrees C or 95 F which is considered unusually hot here) so it could be rather exhausting, dire and boring, especially for us kids, but when we finally got there it also felt so extremely rewarding! And over the years as we did it every year or almost every year, sometimes more than once every year, we all got used to it and considered it part of the overall unique Smołdzino experience.

From our first few times being there I remember me and Olek making sand mountains and sliding down from them. There were always hardly any people, if any at all except us. No madly screaming, splashing kids peeing in the sea and their parents shouting at them to get out of the water for now and possibly their dogs running around, no people selling pop corn and yelling about it through the whole beach, no stray bottle caps or cigarette stubs or other surprises – an ideal place for hermits! 😀 – As a child, I loved collecting seashells and these in Smołdzino were always particularly good quality so I loved doing it there. I grew to love Smmołdzino so much that after some time going to any other beach was just so blah and boring, only Smołdzino had real value for me. The sea was always so clear there. We – but especially our parents – were always marvelling how come people not know about this place, and how great that naturally is for us. – We often bragged about this summer hideout we’ve found to others or recommended it to them but somehow no one shared the degree of our enthusiasm, perhaps because people didn’t think it would pay off for them to drive for an hour to get to the sea when the nearest beach is 15 km away. The village itself though, with its inhabitants, made an impression of a very poor, socioeconomically neglected and kind of grim place. When I realised that when I was a bit older, I found that a very jarring contrast with all the beautiful nature and the sea and the idyllic associations of Smołdzino that I had. The people there lived mostly from fishing and tourism but I wonder what sort of tourism if there were so few people on the beach, and aside from the sea and beautiful nature and views, there wasn’t much more in Smołdzino so it wasn’t like the tourists had many more alternatives as for where to go, unless they used Smołdzino as their base and from there drove to bigger towns where there are more touristy beaches and more things happening, but because these towns are also by the sea they have a lot of accomodations for tourists of their own and they are much better from what I’ve noticed.

That year when it was so extremely hot and Sofi was already part of our family and starting to speak her first words, my aunt and uncle expressed an interest in tagging along with us and Mum somehow got in touch with a woman who lived there and had one big room for rent, so we decided we’ll stay there for a few days rather than just go for a day trip. I thought it was a brilliant idea but I didn’t end up liking it quite as much as I did the day trips, perhaps because of the heat, which was particularly aggravating in our room, and that when we weren’t at the beach, I was deadly bored in there with not much to do. The woman at whose house we lived was extremely chatty and sociable and would make barbecues for us almost every day or want us to spend a lot of time with her family which was very nice and friendly but rather annoying and obtrusive long-term for all of us, and I just didn’t feel as comfortable there with my Dad’s family around as I did when there were just us. I remember one night particularly clearly. Usually when we were there, we the kids would be sent to beds much earlier than the adults, and my circadian rhythm was cooperating for a few first days. But one day, when we were already in beds, I couldn’t fall asleep and the adults decided to go to some local party that was taking place there and see what it’s like. I was still not asleep by the time they came back which was about 1 AM. They all went to sleep and fell asleep pretty quickly as it seemed, but not me. And then suddenly my uncle started snoring, and it was SO freakishly dramatically spectacular and loud! 😀 I was used to unbelievably loudly snoring people (not like used to in the sense that it just didn’t phase me, but more like I was very familiar with the phenomenon from an early age and accepting of that sometimes it just happens and you may end up having a rotten night as a result if you don’t fall asleep before the snorer does 😀 ) because my Dad is a super loud and passionate snorer and when me and Olek were younger we didn’t have our own rooms but rather one huge bedroom where our beds were in one corner and our parents’ bed in another. But I’d never heard before –
and haven’t afterwards either – someone snore THAT loud, like my uncle did, and I wondered how everyone else managed to sleep in such conditions. In the past, when Dad’s snoring would go crazy before I fell asleep, I would cover my head with a pillow or something, but it was way too hot for that then. I found the situation kind of hilarious at first but over time I grew more and more frustrated to the point where it became rather dangerous and I was starting to have some homicidal ideations. I think I finally did manage to fall asleep some time before everyone else woke up, but was the most frustrating night ever for me, hahahaha. I didn’t tell anyone about that, until years later, when it was a great source of amusement for everyone including the snorer and myself.

Also when Sofi was already with us, I spent a lot of time in my Brainworld which was my most powerful coping strategy with life which was yucky at the time. I always had a very rich brainlife but at that time my Brainworld became much larger and more developed. Among other stuff, I made up a sort of submarine or generally aquatic world with sea people ruling it. The king’s name was Akrofil back then (it wasn’t supposed to mean anything specific, it was just a name I made up and liked the sound of but I later changed it to Magnus when someone told me that Akrofil sounds like some kind of pervert and I looked it up and acrophilia apparently is a real thing, a paraphilia, that is 😀 ), and I don’t remember what was his wife’s original name, something sort of oriental, but currently her name is Nerissa, and they had two children and a lot of subjects and they all lived in a castle under the sea but they also felt at home in any other body of water and not necessarily deep down. You could call Magnus or anyone else of them up if you knew how and they would appear if they would consider it necessary, and they could help people with a lot of things. Naturally they always helped people who had something to do with the sea in the first place but they were also very eager to help people who were struggling with anything else a lot and just unhappy. You could talk to them and typically they would take you down to their castle and you could spend some time there in their happy world and just relax and have a lot of fun. They always had a lot of feasts and led a very sumptuous life. But you couldn’t stay there indefinitely so after some time Magnus would send you back on to the land, but he would give you some magical things that could help you cope with the situation that made you call them in the first place, for example such items would enable you to call upon them wherever you were so they would help you in a specific situation, or he would give you a drink that would make you feel better or a special vehicle that could transport you wherever you wanted etc. etc. etc. Sometimes though, when he decided he couldn’t help you practically, he’d just let you stay in there forever, and you could just become one of the sea people. They make up just one section of my Brainworld and aren’t as important a part of it as they were back then, but I still love hanging out with them. And back then when I did that a lot, it made me feel especially close to them and like they were real when I was by the sea. I wasn’t particularly eager then to share things like these with people, but funnily enough, for some reason I did share the whole Akrofil thing with my Dad, and although he’s generally not particularly imaginative and not very flexible-minded, he seemed to love the whole idea almost as much as I did. Perhaps because he loves the sea so it spoke to him somehow. So in Smołdzino I taught him how to call Akrofil/Magnus and we would play sea people together. 😀 Or I would do by myself. Either way was super fun and very nourishing for my escapist brain.

After some time, somehow we stopped going there. I guess life just went in a different direction and we always wanted but never really did. Until last year, when my parents decided to go there for a quick day trip, this time with another aunt and uncle from my Dad’s side of the family. I decided not to go for a mix of different reasons, and turned out that it was a good idea. They arrived there about noon and were hugely surprised to see a long line of cars, all waiting to be let in. And because there are limits on how many people can be at the beach because it’s a nature reserve, only some portion of them were allowed and my parents who were quite late to the party weren’t among them, so they came back. The guy who let people in told them that things have changed a bit over the last couple of years and more people come there regularly, and from what they’d seen the village seemed in a better state now and there were more people. It also had a more touristy feel apparently, with more shops and other such scattered around, which I found worrying when I heard about it, but it’s apparently not very bad and it’s not obnoxiously touristy,, it couldn’t be when it’s a nature reserve, so that’s a good thing, in the grand scheme of things, and for the village it’s good that it’s more prosperous, as it really made a rather sad impression on me all those years ago. Good for them that they are developing.

So there you have – my one of the first and the most favourite holiday destination. – What are your earliest holiday memories? 🙂

Question of the day.

What was the first adult book you ever read? How old were you? Did you ever read YA when you were age appropriate, or did you jump from children’s books to adult books?

My answer:

I was thinking hard about it and it took me really a long time. Probably both because I read a lot, and I don’t really have memory for such details like which book was first and when exactly, I’ll typically remember the plot line of the book, or other things that happened around the time when I read it, what was going on in my life, what were my reactions to/associations with the book etc. But actually when I thought hard enough I figured the answer was much easier than I thought, because one of the first books I read was a proper, very adult, very difficult book. And I’m pretty sure I’ve even written about it on here not that very long ago. I just got signed into the school library and was reading my first, short children’s books, but they weren’t particularly interesting and too short for me to be enough between the times when I was able to go to the library. So I wanted to try something longer and something that I knew I’d actually like, and asked about brothers’ Grim fairytales. I got a huge book, but, to sum it up, because as I said I wrote about it earlier in more detail, there was a mistake and the book I got was nothing like brothers Grim’s fairytales! And the funny thing was that, despite as I read on and couldn’t get myself at all engaged into the oh so boring, dull plotline, and it wasn’t at all like the brothers Grim book my Mum had read to me, no alarm went off in my brain that, uh oh, perhaps I’ve got the wrong book. I thought perhaps it was some really long introduction (though why it was completely off topic I had no idea either). Finally, a young girl who was volunteering in our boarding school group at the time once came over to me and asked just out of curiosity what I was reading. I complained to her that I got brothers Grim from the library but it’s so much more boring than when my Mum read it to me and actually seems like a whole different book, and there’s a lot about animals. She wanted to have a look at the cover and we were both surprised to realise that it was actually some very fancy book about… white lions? if I remember correctly, something like that. Super geeky! I was still very much learning what the whole literature thing was about and how to deal with books, and while I could read the title page myself and did, it must have probably been too disorientating for me yet. I don’t think I’d be into something like that even nowadays, although I’m sure I wouldn’t keep on reading it for as long as I did, it wasn’t really very much like me, I generally get discouraged with books quickly and give up on them ’cause why read something that’s not particularly interesting if there are so many more interesting books out there, I hate being bored.

Anyway, I must have been about 7-8 at the time it happened.

As for adult book in the context of a book containing so called adult content, when I was maybe a preteen, I was a member of our local talking book library. I loved to read and I would happily to it all the time but I could hardly have enough Braille books at home even with all the different sources I got them from, so mostly I listened to talking books on tapes. The library ladies liked me very much and were very nice, but I don’t think they really knew themselves what they had in their library, what the books were about and what ages they were appropriate for. Because I got lots of books from them that, even though I was quite a smart kid, were often for one reason or another not really appropriate for my age either intellectually or emotionally, in hintsight. That particular “adult” book was about a 15-year-old girl, so actually it could probably classify as YA only it did have a lot of sexual scenes that I absolutely wasn’t ready for then, and found all of that quite shocking, together with that the protagonist’s family was very much pathological, and she herself had a sort of lifestyle that I didn’t realise a 15-year-old could live. I think I did knew the basics about the birds and bees by the time, but not much beyond that, and it was just something very new and very overwhelming to me. I don’t think there was anything pervert or anything like that, just very graphic and the whole book overall had a sort of rough feel to it the way I remember it which made it feel even more overwhelming. In a way though, this new world was even quite fascinating. But I felt very much disturbed and after some time I talked about all that with Mum, and she reassured me, explained some things to me that were in this book and that I was wondering about, and said that if I didn’t feel like reading it further, I didn’t have to, and so I left it. I don’t remember the title of it now, I only have a vague recollection that it was German but I’m not even sure of that.

And as for YA, oh of course I read it! A lot! Since quite an early age, and enjoyed it a lot. Moreover, I still do and read a lot of it.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi guys! 🙂

This is my question for you today:

When was the first time you remember feeling really angry?

My answer:

I generally wasn’t the type of a child that would easily get angry, not in my very early years anyway, later it started to look a bit different, when I would bottle it all up and then my brain would suddenly throw it all out at once and I’d feel out of control, but when I was very small I remember I was actually wondering why people get so angry so often about everything, and how do they do it, like as if I didn’t even know how to be properly angry. 😀 Yet my very first childhood memory is all about anger. The first thing in my life that I remember is when Olek was born. I was 2 then, and some people tried to persuade me that children don’t remember things at that young age, but, well, turns out that I do, at least this one thing, maybe because of how intense it felt. Mum was in the hospital, and me and Dad came to visit her. I remember clearly when we came in to the hospital and then we were in a very creaky lift and I was a bit scared because I felt dizzy in it. Mum was on her own in the hospital room and we were both very happy to see each other. Olek, like me and Zofijka, was born through C-section, and she showed me her belly, and I saw the wound and all, it looked horrid, and I remember she had a big needle close to her tummy, I don’t even know what it was for, but, at least then, it looked huge to me and it was all just awful, and I was feeling absolutely, seriously mad at that horrible creature who did that to her, I think good for him that he wasn’t there. I was mad at him for hurting my Mummy, and for taking her away from me. I don’t remember anymore of that, but when me and Olek were kids, we weren’t really like typical siblings – yes we played a bit with each other, and yes we argued like all siblings, especially sisters and brothers do, but I didn’t really like him at all, and I didn’t feel anything positive towards him, I was indifferent to him at best. – And, while I don’t remember those things, my parents recall that I would often come over to him and start to beat him with something, or wouldn’t let him play with me or with my things, or wouldn’t talk to him etc. I was real nasty to him. And we still don’t really have much of a relationship at all, which kinda sucks, and is definitely weird, and we both feel pretty awkward around each other and mostly only talk casually. But I no longer beat him, I’d be afraid to do that as he’s at least 30 cm taller than me. 😀 And it’s not that we don’t like each other now, just don’t have a close bond I guess. But while it seems slightly weird, especially given that I have a much more strong bond with Zofijka who is 10 years younger than me, I guess not all siblings have to have a great relationship.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

What are you remembering?

My answer:

Recently lots of things have been reminding me about one of my close friends, with whom I am no longer in touch with, and it’s kind of bittersweet I’d say. I am thinking a lot about him recently somehow and it is both very nice and hurts at the same time ’cause I’ve been missing him a lot. Also, I had a bad dream last night, not like a full blown nightmare or sleep paralysis, but just not a pleasant dream, nothing more, and it involved some school stuff. I had to be up very early today, and that fact, of being up so early, and having that bad dream, it together reminded me that oh wow, today a year has passed since my finals. And, ugh, I’m so glad all that havoc is over. Both with the preparations and the finals. Last year was so devastating for me because of that, and then the finals themselves were absolutely scary for me, or rather accompanying events, not the actual finals, I guess that was kind of traumatising, or re-traumatising maybe I should say, I don’t know, that’s what my Mum says too. Grrrr scary! And then my Mum reminded me of that horror again. So glad it’s over and I don’t have to see those people from there anymore. I’m having a good day generally today, but my Monkey Maggie the Inner Critic is very active today and wants to constantly remind me that what happened then was only because of me, and, well, I guess at this point I’m no longer sure of anything. As if I ever was. 😀 It’s hard to stay rational when dealing with her really.

What are YOU remembering? 🙂

Question of the day (11th March).

Did you have any pets growing up?

My answer:

Loads! I was growing up in the countryside so there were always lots of pets and animals overall. As I wrote in the last post, we’ve always had fishes. We lived on the same backyard as my grandparents and aunts with their families, and we always had a dog on the backyard. The first one that I remember was called Ugryź (Bite) and he was a rotweiler. Despite his name I remember him being quite nice though he had his own boundaries and demanded respect from everyone. At the same time that we had Ugryź, for a short while there were also my uncle’s two dogs, my uncle and his family lived in a town and they didn’t have a place for them so the dogs lived with us. I don’t remember much about them as I was very small when they lived with us, I know that they were called Mona and Lisa and were both very scary and big and wild and horribly noisy, and had to be separated from Ugryź and at a distance from people, only my grandma brought them food and no one had contact with them, I wondered why anyone would like such scary dogs. There was an incident when my brother was around them both and Lisa bit him very badly and he has a scar from it. But as I said they were only for a short while with us. Ugryź lived for long years but already when I was born he was an old dog so I also don’t remember much of him.

After that we had quite a long break, until my grandma once came back from work with a very small dog. My grandma sells eggs to people so she visits lots of houses and someone just asked her whether she wouldn’t take their dog because they have to move and don’t know what to do with him. I remember we really struggled to name him, until finally grandma came up with Bobik. Bobik was very small, mixed-breed and very energetic and friendly, though a bit mischievous at times. When we lived there, my Mum always seemed to have some strange sort of luck that she found dogs on the streets, and a couple of them stayed with us. One of them was Figa (Fig). She was a big, but very calm and clever dog, though she had a very strong voice and if the situation needed it she would bark really loudly. But other than that she was really calm. She was very authoritative and Bobik always seemed to listen to her. I liked her a lot, because she was so clever. But also she had another quality that I loved in her and that was very useful to me. She liked eating wasps and hornets. When we saw it one summer, we were scared, but she always managed to do it so quickly that they wouldn’t do her any harm and seemed to like it really much. Figa also loved chocolate ice cream.

I don’t know when exactly it was but I guess sometime when we had both Bobik and Figa, my Mum got one of her strange impulses and decided that she would like to have a Caucasian sheep dog. She had a friend who had a breedery or something like that, and she got us such a dog. We called her Masha. I really disliked her. She had very stinky food, and was very noisy, and while overall a very cheerful and hearty and fairly clever dog, she had an awful habit of jumping on people which I hated dearly, and she was just annoying for me. I don’t remember her too well, I don’t even remember what happened to her, I guess we sold her to someone but I’m not perfectly sure. I was at school most of the time then probably and just didn’t think about her much.

We had both Figa and Bobik for a really long time, until they died, and they were both really faithful and likeable dogs.

I guess already when Zofijka was born, again, during a walk, my Mum spotted another stray dog and brought him home. My aunt named him Polar, as in polar fleece, because his fur was so soft. It turned out that Polar was a Polish Tatra sheep dog. He is still there living with my family. He is my most favourite dog of all we’ve had. He can have a fiery temper and always wants to be in charge of things, but he’s also very playful and just good, if you can say so about a dog. He can be very affectionate and I always feel very safe with him. He is a really good guardian and knows who is his people and who is not and is extremely and fiercely protective of his people, he is really scary when you mess up with him. Though he usually doesn’t bark a lot without a need, I remember when I couldn’t sleep, sometimes I felt anxious, or just lonely, and it was so quiet all around at night, and then sometimes out of the blue Polar barked a little, so I knew I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t sleeping hahaha. I regret that Polar can’t have children, or that we couldn’t take him here with us, I’d like to have a dog like him here, all of us would.

At the time we already had Polar, my cousin said he’d like to have his own dog, and he and his mum went to a shelter and he got himself one and called him Rico. I suppose Rico is very traumatised, or something must be a bit wrong with his brain, because he can act very foolishly and unpredictably. he’s small and has very rough fur, a complete opposite to Polar. And he likes to make lots of fuss of himself.

For a short while, at the time we’ve already had Rico and Polar, my Mum got herself a dog of one of her favourite breeds – a Munich schnauzer. We had a real trouble naming him and there were lots of suggestions, though she finally called him Bono, after Bono from U2, she loves this band. Bono wasn’t long with us and I almost don’t remember him. Mum had to sell him because our family weren’t happy with him, you know when there are so many people living together, it’s hard to make everyone happy.

We also had tons of cats on the backyard, most were unnamed, though for years we had a female cat whom I named Misia, who greatly contributed to increasing our local feline population. Most of them all were of course wild and not really up to making friends with humans. There was one sweet little kitten I deeply loved as a little child, he was very cute and small and lovable and gentle, completely not like other cats out there. I named him Parpill, in reference to my imaginary creatures. Me and my brother were carrying him in a stroller around the backyard and playing that he was our baby. 😀 Until when I was at school, one of our local drunkards ran him over, driving under the influence. I was hating him silently for years hahaha, no seriously I really hated him. Another cat that I tried to make friends with I called Pimpuś (there is a popular old Polish children’s book with a cat named Pimpuś in it, and I also had a teddy bear named Pimpuś). Pimpuś was really wild though and a little malicious, or so seemed to me back then.

And then again, when Zofijka was already born, so I was maybe 11-12 or something like that, my grandma came back from work with a cat. Her client said they need to give him away because her daughter, his actual owner, was pregnant. So, to Dad’s absolute dismay, Mum took him home. He didn’t have a name, he was just the cat, until when Zofijka was big enough, she started calling him Kiki. She was showing him her adoration in really strange ways – like dancing around the kitchen holding him by the neck. – Surprisingly, despite all the suffocating love from Zofijka, care and food from Mum, Kiki’s favourite person was Dad. At night, he would always lay on his legs, and follow him everywhere around the house. Kiki, like Misha, was rather withdrawn, though didn’t have the adventurous side to his nature like Misha, he was always afraid of the outdoors and never willing to come out. He was also a bit more affectionate and loyal than Misha, in a way that for Kiki it was more obvious. I liked Kiki, though wasn’t too attached to him and don’t remember him too well because I was mostly at the boarding school I think. I’ve always felt a bit guilty thinking of Kiki. When Kiki was with us and I was home for the Christmas break, I remember that when it was finishing, I really didn’t want to go back to school and was very determined not to go. Not like I wanted it any other time, but with each time I just grew more and more sick of it. I looked up lots of ideas on the Internet how to get ill on purpose so that I wouldn’t have to go, and I made a very precise plan what to do. I waited in my room until everyone will go to bed, Kiki was in my room, and then when finally everyone seemed to be asleep, I sneaked out on the terrace barefoot just in my pj’s. There was a lot of snow and I was walking around in it and wallowing in it for quite a long while until I got all freezing, and then got back home, closing the terrace door behind me, and did the rest of my plan. Mum woke me up early next day as we had to travel to the school, I wasn’t feeling sick at all, other than of anxiety. And the first thing Mum told me was that something utterly unbelievable happened. She went to the kitchen, and saw the cat on the terrace, glued to the glass and waiting for someone to rescue him. Of course the loyal Kiki had to follow me, though I didn’t have a clue about it, and closed him there. I felt awful about that but didn’t say anything, so it stayed as an odd anecdote in our family and Mum always told it to people. I only revealed the secret on my 18th birthday party, when I was out of school and Kiki wasn’t with us any longer, and that was quite a shock to everyone. My Mum got rid of Kiki very spontaneously. She is quite pedantic, and although Kiki was really clean as I remember him, Mum claimed she had way too much cleaning with him. But she wanted to get rid of him in a nice looking way, so decided to be generous and give him to my aunt who has MS so that she’d have company during the day when her family are out at work. Kiki had a good life there as far as I know, and was thoroughly spoiled by my aunt and uncle, got to eat lots of sausage and had become really fat. But then my cousin, who was mainly taking care of him, became pregnant, and they had to give him away. My Mum found him a new home in Warsaw, so he had to travel a fair bit of the country, though I don’t know anything about him now, he’s probably very old if still alive. I wish we kept him for longer, so maybe I would form some real relationship with him and be able to compensate for closing him on the terrace, but then we most probably wouldn’t have Misha, which would be even more sad.

And, as a little girl, maybe 8- or 9-year-old, I was reading articles about different pets and how to care for them in children’s magazines. I generally wasn’t the type of child who would be crazily into animals and always dreaming about a pet but suddenly I got some sort of obsession with pets, and for like a month or so I was constantly tormenting Mum, begging her to buy me a hamster or a guinnea pig. At that time I was really trying to fit in and be like other kids and even had a sort of friend in the neighbourhood, and one day in summer our mums and us were going shopping. And my friend’s mum heard how much I would like to have a hamster or a guinnea pig and was the only person who showed me compassion and understood how badly I wanted a pet and said that their friend’s daughter has a hamster and they have to give it away for some reason so she’ll ask that woman if she could bring it to me. I could see that my Mum was very unsatisfied and annoyed with it and tried to explain to my friend’s mum that it’s not really the best idea, but her point of view was just like mine: “Oh but if she wants a hamster, why not? It’s not a problematic animal”. I guess her friend desperately wanted to get rid of her hamster, and she really wanted to help her. 😀 I was over the moon. So, very soon, just the next day, my friend and the other girl – the hamster’s owner – came to me and I got my hamster with the cage. I called him Bingo, and thought it was a boy, though apparently it was a girl. It was a very weird hamster and acted as if he/she was wild, not at all like the hamsters I read about, and not very playful or likeable. Once he even bit me. So my feelings for him were slowly dissipating, and my Mum really disliked him. When I went back to school after the summer holidays, Olek offered to take care of him and become his temporary owner, but when I came back home, Bingo was long dead. I don’t really remember how it happened. But Olek was taking care of him and then made a very neat grave for him in grandma’s garden. I was actually relieved that there was no Bingo, he was really weird.

And one year I tried having snails as pets, and kept them in a tin filled with salad. That was very short-lasting though.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Have you had any memorable experiences with interesting or extreme weather conditions?

My answer:

As I think about it, nothing significant comes to my mind actually, though I’ve been told by my parents that when I was born, there was a power outage for about a week. We were living in the countryside, and at the time there was something going on with electricity over and over again, though nothing like natural disasters wasn’t involved, it just was such a period I guess and probably some major tech issues. So anyway, it took place at the time when I was born, and my Dad used to joke that that’s why I am blind, that I just got used to the darkness, so now I can’t see hahaha.

How about your experiences? 🙂

Remembering… or how to tell your brain it’s over?

I’m remembering

a lot of stuff from the past lately. Lots and lots of memories which I try to ignore, and sometimes I succeed, sometimes not. So I thought maybe writing about it would help, if ignoring doesn’t work out too well. Those memories are mostly related to the beginning of the school year, which used to be an absolute nightmare for over a decade.

I see people from my family and others buying their kids things for school, I hear my Mum talking how she’s afraid of the next schol year for Zofijka, I notice time flying so quickly and September approaching, and each time I see any signs of the school year coming, I have to remind my brain, it’s not you now, it’s over. But it doesn’t listen for too long, and soon I get overflooded by another wave of memories.

I remember all those days and nights before I”d go back to the boarding school when I cut myself ’cause my pain and helplessness were too bad. I remember not being able to eat and sleep because of the anxiety. I remember the feelings of utter loneliness and not belonging anywhere, along with many other overwhelming feelings with which I couldn’t cope, but finally I always had to cope somehow, so I just bottled them up, feeling them rising inside of me with every second. I remember feeling very unsafe and rebelled that I had to leave everything that felt nice, familiar, everything and everyone that I loved, and how desperate I was to not do it. I felt guilty and weak because even though the situation was the same and obvious for so many years, that there was no alternative for me, I still couldn’t adjust to it. Well in a way I did, but the adjustment was only hiding what I felt so it wouldn’t bother anyone else, because well how long can it take you to accept something so obvious and inevitable that if you have special needs and need special education, you need to go to school where they can adjust things to you, and there aren’t many of such so most children have to be away from their families. For me that was an issue, and it looked like it was wrong.

Those feelings always accompanied me when I had to leave home and go to the boarding school, but when the school year was starting, they were particularly intense. Because the school year always meant changes. Changes that could often regard me more or less, but even if they were directly to do with me, it wasn’t a norm that I, or even any of my parents, were asked about our opinion, whether we agree on them or not, whether they’re acceptable. That was normal there. If you had a friend, who was also your roommate, with whom you lived for years, you got to know very well, you should be aware that when you come back to school next year, you may suddenly be informed that you two will no longer live together because… just because. And you could not only be moved to another room, but also to a completely different group. THis exact situation didn’t happen to me, only because I didn’t have real friends there, but it did to one of my classmates and she was just told to get over it, because it was necessary and such situations happen in life so she has to get used to it. I though changed my roommates very often too, and it was often very tough. And many other changes could await you there, hardly, if ever, nice.

So yeah, I was just sick of anxiety every year before the start of school year, and afterwards too.

But it’s now four years since I got out of there, and I am so happy about it, yet each time it’s close to September, my brain goes mad. Even this year, when I’m completely free of that freaky brain washing machine called education system. I even had a pretty yucky dream last night, I haven’t have this kind of memory dreams in a while, but that one was yucky and it took me quite a while to get back to the present after I woke up. Those dreams aren’t particularly scary, like creepy or something, but are just kinda made of my crappy memories so reliving them over and over definitely isn’t nice aND I wake up feeling nausious and stressed out.

As I wrote earlier today in Music Monday Care & Love post, I am trying to fill this week with various self care activities and other enjoyable things, and that helps me to stay in the present and focus on the positive, and there is much positive stuff going on in my life. Plus it helps me to not slip down again to that self-loathing hole, which is always very easy when I’m having memories. But it doesn’t stop my brain from going back to the past, often at least expected moments.

So I wonder, how do you make your brain know it’s over? It seems all so complicated.

 

Moo, 6 Word Story.

Moo –

the first word Zofijka said.

 

Fflur Dafydd – Rachel Myra.

Hi guys! 🙂

yesterday’s song was perfectly matched with the time and the weather we have here, but today’s one is more wintery, though I don’t think it should matter that much.

It’s a beautiful song written and composed by Fflur Dafydd in Welsh. Fflur Dafydd is a very versatile artist, she’s not only a singer/songwriter, but she has also written a few books, and I guess also some poems.

She wrote this song for her grandmother – Rachel Myra. By the way, I think Rachel Myra is a very interesting and vintage name combo. There is a line in this song “Rachel Myra, Ei henw’n gynnes yn y gaeaf” (Rachel Myra, your name so warm in the winter) and it kinda speaks to me because this name sounds so homely (I mean homely homey, comfy perhaps), kinda warm, like I usually have different sensory associations with words and names too and when I first saw the title of this song I thought that it smells like ginger, or like ginger tea with lemon and honey or something… so I was a bit shocked when I finally was good enough at Welsh to roughly figure out that this song has quite a wintery feel and then that there is this verse in it. 😀 That’s another reason to my theory that names do have some universal code, or something like this. Rachel itself, or Myra on its own, don’t give such a strong feel, althugh they’re also warm names on their own.

I really like this song, it’s melody is beautiful and it’s beautiful overall.

The translation that is in the video was apparently by Fflur Dafydd herself.

Share Your World – March 19, 2018.

What is your earliest memory?

Many people with whom I’ve shared this memory say it’s impossible to have such early memories, as I was 2 years old then, but anyway I remember it and it is too vivid and subjective to be just something I remember from what others told me, in my opinion, also when I talked to my parents about it they told me they never knew that I perceived that situation this way.

This memory is about my brother’s birth, or rather a bit afterwards. I only remember that me and Dad went to Mum to the hospital, after he was born. I remember being in the lift for the first time and being a little bit afraid, I was often afraid of such kind of motion, something moving up and down, because of my balance issues. Then we came in to the room where Mum lied, she was rather weak and didn’t talk much as she probably still was under the influence of anesthetics (we were all born through caesaeran section). She let me touch her tummy and the impresson of this moment has stayed with me for very long. I felt her stitches and it somehow moved me very deeply. I know I felt like it is my brother’s fault and it has to be very painful for Mum. I told them he had to be terrible if she now looks like this and my Dad was laughing he surely is an absolute monster. Then I remember us leaving and being n the lift again and going out of the hospital and nothing more about it. But I’ve often thought this situation had to have some significant influence on me. My parents told me, and I remember some bits and pieces myself, that I was often pretty rude for Olek, yelling at him or punching him all of the sudden and not letting him touch me, although it wasn’t a long period of time, but I guess we never had a proper/normal sibling relationship, mainly because of our limited contact as I spent most of my childhood away from home.

Which way does the toilet paper roll go? Over or under?

Over.

What makes you feel grounded?

Having my feet on the ground, warmth, but not heat, touching Misha and his purr, soft, relaxing music, deep breathing, and for some reason which I don’t really get – the scent and taste of mint.

What did you appreciate or what made you smile this past week?  Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.

Misha

, progress in my languages, blogging, strengthening relationship with my Mum. I was doing a lot of self care stuff this week, much more than usual. On Monday I had a very nice morning. Dad needed to do something in the port, he delivers fuel, often to ports, and has other things to do there related to his work as well. He offered my Mum to go with him and as she agreed, I decided to go with them too. While Dad was in the port, we were at the Sea

and it was very nice and beautiful and we had a great time together, we also spent a lot of time together after we got back home. Yesterday we all were in a restaurant and had a big dinner, very yummy. It was anxiety provoking, it is always very anxiety provoking for me to go out and there was a lot of people, I also find it rather stressful to eat among many people, but despite all that anxiety it was very nice, I can’t remember when was the last time before yesterday that I was in a restaurant. 😀 I guess more than a year ago. and although overall my week was rather uneventful, it was mostly good.

This challenge is hosted by Cee

. Thanks so much. 🙂

 

Question of the day.

If you could know the absolute and total truth to one question, what question would you ask?

My answer:

First thought I had – is there really any afterlife after we die? This may seem strange since I’m a practicing Christian so should be sure that there is, and I believe in it, but I suppose everyone of us, no matter what we believe in or if we don’t believe in the existence of any God, ask it sometimes, ’cause many of us would like to be sure. Is it all true or is it just a bullshit and we will just die and nothing will happen afterwards? That’s interesting. DO you guys ask yourselves this question sometimes too? But then I had another thought and I think I would prefer to get answer for this one, as I wonder really often about that and sometimes get quite frustrated about it:

Why actually was it so hard for me to go through that long period of time when I was at the boarding school? Or maybe not why it was so hard, but why did it affect me, my emotions and my mental health so much? Why I felt like it was so challenging if I wasn’t abused there, besides one year when I was emotionally abused by some of the staff, but then it finished. Why did I have such big issues with adapting there and why was it so overwhelming in so many different ways, for so many different reasons? Did other kids feel it too, but they were such great actors that I didn’t notice anything? They had to be really great, because I think I’m pretty good at “feeling” other people and I always thought they are happy there, well as happy as kids may be when they aren’t with their families. I know only one girl who I know that reacted to being there like me and ended up with generaised anxiety. Luckily she was much younger than me when people started to see what’s going on and it was my Mum who told her mum that she should take her home. Her issues looked very familiar for me. Is it the matter of high sensitivity? Coincidence of too many hard things put together? Emotional weakness? My Mum thinks so, but then why do a few other people said they think I’m strong? Is actually such thing like emotional strength a thing that can be objectively measured? Or maybe I was already freaky when I got there? Would I struggle less nowadays with my mental health if I wouldn’t go there? Or maybe I wouldn’t struggle at all? Why I am so afraid of processing my emotions and reacting so weirdly, emotionally and physically, to different, apparently normal stuff that all the other people are indifferent about and don’t think much about?

Well it is certainly more than one question. 😀 But it’s all swirling around one thing, so I look at it as one, big question. It all really makes me wonder.

What would be your questions. 🙂

Present.

It’s often hard for me to live in the present

.I’ve always had a tendency to either worry to much about the future, or delve in the past, analysing all the awful stuff that happened to me or idealising my good memories, or when my future seemed absolutely hopeless to me, to escape into daydreams where everything looked colourful and I could entertain myself with millions of beautiful scenarios of my life and the reality around me.

I noticed it at some point a few years ago, while talking with my Mum about something good that happened to me in the past and I was all like “oh it was so good back then” and Mum finally told me something that really amazed me and gave me a lot to think about. She said she thinks I think about the past or the future so much that I don’t live the present and can’t appreciate it, and so my own life flies past beside me, without me taking actually part in it. And although it sounded harsh and brutal for me back then and I immediately said it’s not true, it stayed with me and I thought about it a lot.

Finally I realised it’s true. I realised that when those things I liked so much about the past, when all those nice moments were happening, I didn’t think much about them, didn’t think they are nice because my mind was focused on so many other things, negative and stressful things, so I didn’t really live that moment, only in my memories afterwards. I know now that there is even the word for it in the Welsh language, which can’t be translated directly to English, it is “hiraeth” and it means longing for things, or particularly places, that don’t really exist, because you idealised them in your mind. Like your motherland for example, when you’re an emigrant. Some time passed away, so it could change, and your mind deludes you that it was better than it ever was because, the grass is always greener… obviously. Hiraeth may also refer to the longing for something you don’t know, so you know you feel the longing or yearning and it’s very strong, but you don’t know what’s it all about so it’s a bit frustrating. Oh but I shouldn’t talk about the hiraeth now!

So I realised I was experiencing that what now I know as hiraeth and decided to change it. I thought it is a total and pointless waste of energy and of time to do what I did.

I started to try to see all the positive things around me and, pretty quickly actually, it wasn’t already so hard for me to notice different small things in life that could be enjoyable. I still am a pessimist, but not of that kind that don’t see any positives at all. My pessimism, as I wrote sometime before, is more of a defensive nature. And it doesn’t stop me from being positive and grateful for all the good things in life. I am very often depressed, but, unless it hits me really hard for some time, usually I’m not anhedonic, so, I still have my passions, things I like to do, and they usually help me. Also I cope better with not so distant future. Like, let’s say about three years ago, if I would have a nice weekend and could do lots of things I like, everything would be great, I wouldn’t focus on the weekend, but would likely freak out about all the stressful things that wait for me on Monday. Now I rarely experience it to an extent that really disturbs me a lot. If I have something stressing ahead, it’s still in the back of my mind, but if I’m doing something better right now, I surely won’t focus on that stressful thing. Why should I do it?

I think it is now easier to appreciate the life and all about it more, because the present is just easier for me than the past was. Just the fact that I wasn’t seriously suicidal in years now means I’m now in much better place than I was back then.

Unfortunately, I’m still worrying, sometimes almost obsessively, about the more distant future, it’s very hard to control it, especially in times like these, when I’m finishing one of the stages in my life and aren’t quite sure what to do next. I am still daydreaming, and, especially at night, different crappy memories like to remind me about their existence. I’m still trying to unlearn it. But at least I haven’t that feeling, that my life is going beside me, and I am stuck in the past or in the future and don’t take any advantage of it.

Do you also feel sometimes like you’re not living the present?