"My Journey Through Life: Childhood" Part 6

While I was stuck at home with a huge cast on my leg, day and night, I met a guy on VKontakte. He was a year older than me and studied at the same art academy as me (yes, I somehow managed to study there for a whole year before getting expelled for skipping classes 🤪😂). I had seen him a few times before but couldn’t quite understand why I felt such a strong pull toward him. Seriously 😅 But we had never actually spoken to each other.

Somehow, we randomly found each other on VK some time later and started talking. We texted 24/7, and before long, we agreed to meet in person. Since my cast had been removed, but I still couldn’t walk without crutches, we arranged to meet in a park just across the street from my house. There was an old stadium with benches, and that’s where we planned to meet so that I could sit down (at that time, there were barely any other benches in the park, so everyone hung out at the stadium 😅).

My mom brought me to the stadium and took my crutches away—I was super embarrassed by them, to be honest. They looked older than my great-grandmother, I swear! Those crutches had probably survived World War II at the very least 😂

So, I asked my mom to take them, and I sat down. Believe it or not, it was love at first sight. And to this day, it still amazes me that something like that actually happens. And in fact, on the very first day, we already said it to each other. Well, actually, I was the first one to say it—but it just kind of slipped out of me as he was leaving 😅 I remember being so shocked by my own words that I instantly covered my mouth with my hand, my eyes wide like saucers 🤣

That same evening, he said it back, and to me, it felt like something out of a fairytale—completely unreal))

From that moment on, we were completely inseparable. And considering our teenage maximalism, our age, and everything else, of course, it couldn’t end well 😅 But we were together for two years, and at 14, I was one of the very few who had such a long and serious relationship at that age. We even dreamed of getting married—OBVIOUSLY 😂

And no, we never had sex—ANSWERING THIS RIGHT AWAY because I know how curious people can be 😂😂

We wrote poems for each other, he constantly drew me (he was an incredibly talented artist, by the way), and unlike me, he graduated from art school 🤣 we made tons of little crafts, and we just genuinely enjoyed every second together. We could lie down for hours just staring at each other (yeah, we were that crazy 😂). It was a love like no other, and I used to say that if anything ever happened to him, I wouldn’t be able to live on. And I truly believed that back then 😅🙈

During this same period, we received the news that my grandfather (my mom’s dad—the one who never allowed me to call him “grandfather”) was diagnosed with cancer. Stage 4, colon cancer. It’s been 14 years now that he has been living on chemotherapy. After surgery on his intestines, the cancer spread to his liver, then to his kidneys, then to his lungs. But this led to major transformations in his character. (He never complained about how he was feeling, by the way. He always said he was fine, even when, objectively, he clearly wasn’t.) If before he was a ruthless dictator—towards his relatives, towards everyone… well, actually, he treated us even worse. For several years after I was born, he didn’t even consider me his granddaughter. To this day, in his phone, we are saved as “Ira Mihaylova” (my mom, his DAUGHTER) and “Nastya Mihaylova” 😅.

But now he has changed. A lot. He has become softer, kinder, more empathetic. He stopped being greedy. Now we can joke around with each other, even tease my mom 🤣. I even started visiting him. That doesn’t mean he became a saint 😅—far from it. But I truly believe that cancer changed him in a profound way. It became an example for me of how strong a person’s resilience can be when it comes to their survival, and how important it is to always maintain a positive mindset, even when things seem completely hopeless. And most importantly—I saw with my own eyes just how much a person can change when life throws something terrifying at them. But for some reason, human beings can’t seem to “wake up” and truly start transforming themselves until something catastrophic happens. And as practice—and my personal experience—has shown (and you know, I have plenty of experience, especially after my recent cardiac tamponade 🤣), the scarier and harder the trials, the more powerful the transformation. And I realized that if I inherited my warrior spirit from anyone, it’s definitely from him))

Rami Bleckt has written a lot of books on this topic. If you’re not familiar with his work, I highly recommend it. He was actually the starting point of my spiritual journey. But more on that later. 😉

And then, something happened that still makes me cry whenever I think about it. That’s how deeply personal and painful it is for me. Honestly, I still don’t know where I found the courage to share this with so many people 🙈

The last time I tried to talk about it, I ended up sobbing uncontrollably, and I was in the hospital at the time 🙈😅🤪

Remember when I mentioned that I grew up with my dog Sabi and my cat Funtik?

I had been with Funtik since I was three years old, all the way until I was 14. He was my best friend in the world—I loved him more than anything. We were inseparable. We slept on the same pillow, he always kissed me goodnight (I'm not exaggerating!! he literally licked my cheek with his tongue, my parents are witnesses! 😅🤣) and honestly, our bond was the most magical and unbreakable connection between a human and an animal that I’ve ever seen. Even the mere thought of losing him was unbearable.

And then he got sick. He lost a lot of weight, stopped eating, drank a lot of water, and when we shaved his fur, we realized he was just skin and bones. I still have those pictures, but even after nearly 15 years, I can’t bring myself to look at them.

We took him to every vet we could find, but the diagnosis was the same—his kidneys had failed.

I remember the last doctor we saw. He did an ultrasound and said, “Your kitty is not young. One kidney has already failed. We have two options: we can try surgery, insert a drain, and maybe he’ll live a little longer. Or… we can let him go.”

Funtik was sitting in my arms. My mom looked at me with teary eyes and said, “Nastusha, it’s up to you to decide.”

And there I was, 14 years old, having no idea what death truly meant, let alone how to handle it!

I took him, carried him out of the clinic, crossed the street, and sat down on the grass in front of someone’s house. I curled up with him, talking to him, sobbing so hard I thought my heart would stop. I was torn between the desperate desire to keep him with me—I couldn’t imagine life without my best friend—but even more than that, I couldn’t bear to see him suffering. Putting him through surgery would be even worse. The whole time, I was trying to feed him with a syringe, but he wouldn’t even try to swallow. It just dripped out of his mouth. It was heartbreaking.

So I took him back inside, held him close, and said, “Do it.”

He passed away right in my arms. I remember taking off his collar—it’s still with me to this day.

And that was it. For two weeks, I didn’t say a single word. I didn’t eat anything. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t do anything. I just cried. I kept thinking I saw him in the hallway. For a 14-year-old who had never known loss, it was absolute hell.

I remember coming to my grandmother’s house and sobbing uncontrollably on her bed, and she just said, “That’s enough, stop it. You cried, and that’s enough. After all, it’s just a cat.” I remember her words so vividly, it even feels like I can hear them now. And oh God, how much it hurt back then. But what hurt even more was that in my family, it simply wasn’t acceptable to show weakness, tears, or emotions, and of course, no one supported me.

My mom was also struggling, even my dad, because everyone loved Funtik. He had lived with us for 11 years, and everyone was attached to him—but not the way I was. It felt like a piece of flesh had been ripped out of my chest, leaving behind a huge open wound that everyone could see, yet no one acknowledged.

I remember how at night (of course, I wasn’t sleeping—I just couldn’t. My stomach was twisted in knots, and the pain was so overwhelming that I physically couldn’t fall asleep), I would close my eyes and imagine myself destroying my entire room—smashing everything, screaming, pulling my hair out. And it all felt so real that it actually made me feel a little better, because at least in my head, I could release my emotions and pain.

My friend, who was also very attached to her cat (which was alive and healthy), was the only one who truly understood what I was feeling after losing mine. This happened when I went to school after not seeing anyone except my boyfriend for two weeks. She approached me in the school corridor, already aware of what had happened. She just silently hugged me and spoke words of support—she was the first person to find the right words, and there was real energy of support in them.

A couple of weeks later, my boyfriend shook me and said, “Please, enough. Come back to me.”

And I remember it so vividly—it had just rained, it was summer, and the sun was setting. I looked up and saw a single leaf on a tree, still wet from the rain, and the sunlight hit it in such a way that it was glowing. It literally shimmered, so beautiful. And then, a drop of water fell from that leaf, landing right on my eyelashes. I blinked, looked at him, and said, “Okay.” And then I broke down crying.

That was the first word I had spoken in two weeks 🙈

Slowly, I started coming back to life. I went back to school, started seeing my friends again. On the first day of school, my mom even called my homeroom teacher to warn her that I might be a little off and explained what had happened. She asked that I not be bombarded with questions just yet. So everyone knew and was understanding—except… guess who?

Yep, the same guy I smacked with a stack of books 😂

I don’t know what was going through his head at the time, especially considering he had a crush on me, but it was definitely something completely insane 😅

One day, a few classmates and I were sitting in the classroom while the rest were at gym class. Out of nowhere, this guy starts singing a dumb little song:

“The kitty died, the poor kitty, all that’s left of the kitty is its fur. The poor kitty, the kitty died.”

I looked up at him, and at that moment, his fate was sealed 🙈😂

Long story short, people had to physically pull me off him, Later, it turned out I had busted his lip pretty badly 🙈

His parents came to school, but when the teacher explained what had happened and why, even his own parents and the teacher scolded him on top of it all 😂

Of course, he apologized later, and we went back to normal, but he never sang any stupid songs again 😂😂😂

If bullying taught me anything, it was how to stand up for myself—and even more so, to protect the ones I love.

But that year, something incredible happened—probably the reason you’re even reading this right now!

Can you guess what it was? 😉