Autobiography

2

With that set out the rest of my artistic involvement. I would sing in my room, sketch the first thing I found aesthetically pleasing to look at, and even though they were stick figures at the time, they've turned into what I wanted to portray nowadays. 

The moment I began piano lessons was also emotionally altering for me. But this time, in a positive way. My teacher was the sweetest soul on earth, and she wanted to see me succeed through all the bumps we faced on the road. She always said I was a quick learned, but I required someone to show me examples of how to do it beforehand. 

She never got tired of playing the songs so I would get used to the melody. "Miss Katerina!" I ran into her arms the day of her birthday, giving her a flower I had picked up on the way there. Although teachers always say that you're their favourite student, she always made me feel like that statement was true. 

When the end of the year concert came around, she wanted me to sing on top of playing my tiny 10 measure piece. At the time 3000 people seemed like the whole world crammed into one, but I somehow managed to get through both performances. 

I remember shaking through the piece as I played, not fully sure if the sound was coming out of the piano or not. And immediately after that singing a short but favourite song of mine to which I recall none of the lyrics to today. 

The applauses received at the end made everything worth it. My motivation as an almost-four-year-old was sky high. 

That was the first and last time I sang in front of people. 

Not because I didn't want to, but the only time I felt motivated was from strangers that had no artistic talent whatsoever. My own family on the other hand, felt the need to give judgmental comments on how I wasn't as good as others. 

My biggest issue with being talented was being forced to play in front of family friends that I didn't really have a care for showing my songs to. Yet with the unbelievably high expectations of my reputation-driven Eastern European parents, I had to obey their wishes. 

Which are considered more as commands. 

Regardless of the slow but depleting patience on that aspect, my biggest support system was my best friend back then. Erika and I did everything together. We were absolutely inseparable. We entered the dreaded schooling system together, and pushed through every day with all we had. She was everything you could ever ask for in a friend. 

We shared snacks, had playdates, went to each other's birthday parties. We even lived two blocks away from each other. 

During our first ever school excursion we would be going to Lego Land. That's definitely what it was. (It was a two story Lego store that seemed huge at our age.) 

The entire roll call we were planning out what we would do on the bus ride there, when we heard this agitating voice from behind us. Dina, this witch in a child's body was out to ruin our friendship, because she was what we considered the drama queen of first year. 

The look on Erika's face when she grabbed my arm and ripped me out of my line and into her own was an emotion I have never seen surface from someone for me. 

Seconds after that we were walked into the bus, and I turned to see Erika had turned red, tears streaming down her face, as her sobs were muffled into silent sniffles. 

Now the issue here was that I could do nothing about it. Once the roll call was done, we were not allowed in the slightest to move from the people we would be sitting in. 

That is, until the next roll call when we would return. Me, being the genius that I was, I already had a foolproof plan. 

The second the bus stopped for us to enter the wonders of the Lego world, I ran to my best friend to fulfil whatever bucket list we had at the time. By the time we got back to our returning roll call, I locked arms with Erika and refused to look anywhere else until I made sure that we wouldn't be separated again. 

My genius plan worked. We sat together on the bus, and ended up falling asleep on each other until we got back home. Later that day we ended up trading our favourite converse. 

I had the most stable, lifelong friendship with this girl, she had become my sister at that point. She was the blonde to my brunette. The golden retriever to my black cat. The good cop to my bad cop. You get the idea. 

She was part of every second of the year, except for the summertime. That was a whole different Madea to begin with. 

We would always have the longest family vacations for summers, because we would all travel back to Albania in order to be with the rest of our cousins. It was always my mum's side of the family, and I was too excited every time to the point where I would develop an eating disorder a week beforehand from joy. 

No food or sleep was consumed in the slightest until I made it to the other side of the border. 

But that's a conversation to be brought up later on. For now we stay in Greece. 

I think the moment I knew I was an extroverted introvert was because of Erika. We somehow had made friends with all of our classmates, but no one ever knew our next move. We were both spontaneous, keeping to ourselves for important things, but never making others feel excluded when they were within our vicinity. 

And the purity we had as kids seemed everlasting. During rainy days we would find snails in the bushes outside of the school, and spent hours on end hiding under an umbrella as we basically adopted them until it was time to go home. 

The same happened on sunny days, but with ladybugs. We once filled a tiny bag with almost 20 ladybugs that we found all around the playground. 

Towards the end of our first year, the summer began to change us for the better. Our hobbies involved more 'tween' shows, our favourite being Patito Feo. We learned every damn choreography that they streamed word for word, as if we would be tested on it in school. 

Both being straight-A students, it was kind of a given that we would be obsessed with perfecting everything. Although we ran into our first disagreement when the teams in the show we picked were rivals, it only made our friendship stronger. Our opinions became to bloom into each of our characters, slowly becoming our own people in the world. 

Everything was the way that it should be.