Thursday, July 19, 2012

Hidden emotions and feelings…

My name is Radu, I am 17. I think I’m lucky now. Why? Because I have a place to live, and there are persons around me, who support me and trust me. They have become like a family to me, which makes me hope that I’ll have a successful future. I want to become a doctor, to help people around me, but what is most important, is the family and my future children, for whom I’ll be a loving father. I want to give my children what I didn’t have: a family, a house, harmony, and parental love.

Before I was born, my parents were respected people, known in the whole village as hard working and diligent. My father was a teacher of physics, and my mother was an economist in the collective farm. We are two siblings, my sister had a true and happy childhood. After I was born, the life of my family became harder and harder, and my parents started to increasingly consume alcohol. They became dependant soon. They lost their jobs and worked on day basis in the village, often just to buy some alcohol. I felt more and more lonely, my sister had her own life. Children no longer played with me. Nobody needed me at home, I was always hungry, I didn’t have clothes and I would freeze at home. All my attempts to draw their attention resulted in beatings and bad words. Time passed, and our house looked like after war: no windows, bed quilts and plastic cover instead of glass, they sodt almost everything they had in the house.

When I went to school, I felt like nobody’s child. I sat in the last row, the teacher used to ask me very seldom, I was a bad pupil. I rarely did homework, because I didn’t understand many things, and nobody helped me. Strange persons always visited our home, they drank alcohol with my parents and it all often ended in quarrels.

When I was 10, I was taken away from my parents and placed in Cahul residential school. It was very difficult in the beginning, I wanted to go home, although I knew that nobody was waiting for me there. Soon I got used to the new place, and I made friends with many children, because they accepted my as I was, and nobody humiliated me because of my parents.

Two years ago my father died, and my family’s life became even harder. Mother was indifferent to everything around. My sister married and went to another village, breaking any relation with us. Her husband didn’t want even to hear about our family. It was me who had to care about everything. On school holidays I used to work in people’s households, for food, I gathered wood from the forest, to provide for the heating, did the house up, but when I came the next time, I always found the same mess everywhere. All my attempts to convince my mom change her life were useless. I felt very ashamed, and I always asked myself, why I was so unlucky.

Since 2007 I live in the Complex for social services and I successfully finished secondary school in the town. I wanted to pursue my education, to get a profession. My educators and social assistants from the Complex helped me to enroll in the medical school. I was given opportunity to live in the Center for young people that is a component of the Complex, because I can’t live in my family. Now I’m sure that I will see my dream come true. I am supported, I am not alone.

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