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"My Journey Through Life: Childhood" Part 8

Added 2025-02-17 15:00:16 +0000 UTC

All my childhood, I had very long hair, and I always dreamed of getting a short haircut. But my mom strictly forbade me to cut it, and it seemed incredibly unfair to me—after all, it was my hair, not hers.

And then, one fine day, when I was already 15, I went for a haircut and decided to go against my mom’s wishes—which, for me, was something completely out of the ordinary 😅 I was genuinely afraid of her, but this was my first step in standing up for what I wanted. So I told the hairdresser, “Cut it.”

For the first time in my life, my hair was no longer than my shoulders, and I loved it—it was amazing! But when my mom saw me… oh my god, the stress I experienced 😅. Of course, I had to listen to her yelling about how I had no right to do that, that the hairdresser had no right to cut my hair without her permission. They were only supposed to trim the ends as always!

But thankfully, the world isn’t without kind people, and I was lucky that the hairdresser decided to support me 😅 Of course, my mom refused to talk to me for a while. But eventually, she had no choice but to accept it. And after that, I continued cutting my hair shorter and shorter—until one day, in a minibus, someone mistook me for a boy from behind 🤣 But more on that in the next chapter.

Luckily, all my friends liked my haircut, and my boyfriend especially supported me. Though, in his words, he would have liked me even if I were bald or wearing a bucket on my head—he just didn’t care how I looked 😅

Honestly, as I write all of this for you and look through my old photos, I feel quite upset. Throughout my entire conscious life, I genuinely believed I was fat, ugly, and the most unattractive person ever. But now, for the first time, looking at my younger self, I realize that it was all just in my head and had absolutely nothing to do with reality. It makes me really sad that at a time when I should have been enjoying my youth, beauty, and uniqueness, I was instead tearing myself apart. And that period of my life is gone, never to return, which makes it even sadder. But even if I can’t change the past, now I have the ability to appreciate myself, love myself, and truly enjoy who I am. And maybe, through my writing, I'll help someone else realize it sooner than I did. Even just three years ago, I couldn’t look at my old pictures without feeling bad about myself, but thanks to nude photography, thanks to your kind words, year after year, my perception of myself started to change. And I didn’t even realize how much it had changed until a week ago when I started this journey through the depths of my memory.

I’m incredibly grateful to you for showing interest in my story—because of that, this whole narrative came to life. You contribute much more to artists’ lives than you might think. But I want to write a separate chapter about this because it’s a big and complex topic.

At that time, my life revolved around constant fights with my parents, which led to serious problems in my relationship with my boyfriend. Though, for a teenager, I guess that’s pretty normal—after all, youthful maximalism is a real thing 😅

Any minor disagreement between us would escalate into something huge. We kept breaking up and getting back together after a couple of days, over and over again. Our still-developing minds just couldn’t handle the intense emotions we felt for each other, and that led to a ton of problems—especially since we were actually quite different people.

But my childhood traumas definitely didn’t help the situation. I started struggling with anger management (which, as I later found out, turned out to be part of borderline personality disorder—again 😅). And I was very jealous, though compared to some of my friends, I wasn’t even that bad—some of them were way more jealous of their boyfriends than I was, and it even scared 🫣

Anyway, the day before my 16th birthday, we broke up—over the phone 😅🙈 And I was absolutely devastated. I was suffering so much that at night, I would shake in bed, my stomach would twist in knots, and I could barely sleep.

But I knew it was like withdrawal—I just had to endure it, and eventually, it would get better. At the same time, I knew deep down that this person wasn’t right for me, even though I loved him insanely.

I stopped eating. Every morning, I would secretly give my breakfast to stray dogs on my way to school. All my classmates knew about it and even tried to feed me with their own food. But the last thing I wanted was to eat—I just physically couldn’t. Food wouldn’t go down my throat.

I lost so much weight that I dropped to almost 41 kg. But you’ll learn more about that in the next chapter, next month.

I want to thank each and every one of you who took the time to read my long texts, as well as those who shared their feelings and childhood stories—I truly appreciate it! 🫂

If you enjoy this format of my storytelling and would like me to continue writing about myself, please let me know so that I can start working on new chapters in March.

With love and gratitude,

Yours, Anastasia ❤️