Girl Who Changed My Life(Book - Chapter 1)
Sonya - A Girl Who Changed My Life
This is a story about me and a girl named Sonya. This happened 37 years ago and fatally changed the direction of my life.
I don't think she is aware or ever will be aware of how much she influenced the overall direction of my life.
I am not sure if I should be thankful or angry. I feel confusion and sadness that my actions were influenced so much by an event that happened when I was 12 years old. I am 49 now, and I finally processed what happened and who I have become because of something that happened 37 years ago. Sometimes an event, a split moment, a person could change your life forever, and you won’t even realize it until much later.
Chapter 1 - Let me start from the beginning.
Once upon a time, In 1986, I was attending elementary school in the city of Dnipro, Ukraine. I lived with my grandmother in a small apartment. We were a poor family, but I did not know it, and I did not feel it. My grandma Anya took great care of me, I never was hungry or dirty or thirsty. I was in a comfortable stable home and I was surrounded by love but I missed my mom terribly. I was traumatized by my mother being mostly absent, or coming and going, sometimes for a year or two at a time. I would see her for a week, a few days, or a month, and then she would be gone again for many months. She was young, and she was pursuing her dream of becoming an opera singer. She was studying singing and working in choirs in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. I was safe with grandma but the absence of my mom was very painful, this is the first time in my life I experienced deadly sadness.
As she became somewhat settled there and became a vocal student at the Ukraine National Conservatory of Tchaikovsky, she learned about the Lysenko School of Music for Gifted Children, which was connected to the conservatory. Teachers from the school taught at the conservatory, and vice versa. These two organizations were connected through teachers, directors, and musicians - many of the most well-known people in music in Ukraine. Attending the Lysenko School would give a student a better chance of being accepted into the conservatory.
I was studying music in Dnipro(big gray industrial city full of factories), and my mother wanted me to compete for one of the limited spots at the Lysenko School. The preparation began. There was a specific program that students had to play in order to be admitted at a certain level. (one etude by Czerny, one Invention by JS Bach, Sonata by Mozart, and a piece by Tsaikovsky or Schumman)I went to Kyiv because I wanted to be with my mother. I do not think I was especially excited about the school itself, but the chance of finally living with my mother was everything I wanted.
