March 26, 2014 – Loving Iva | Liberating My Creative Soul

This is by far most personal post I have ever writen on this blog. That is also why it’s a bit long. I am scared. But clicked publish. 🙂 It’s for Weekly Writing Challenge.

I always loved to write… I can’t remember how and when it started, but I always loved to write and read. I have a video tape for those old VCR’s of my third birthday. I wanted to read from newspapers so I can prove I can. AT THREE!

I used to love going to library on the children section, I remember I was wandering around shelves and getting lost in the, oh so many stories that haven’t been read. As I got older I just moved from children section into teen section and continued to get lost. 🙂

In school I loved to write. I would always get a five (that’s an A) from writing… But high school almost killed the reading-lover I was. We were obligated to read so many books through school plan that we would literary not sleep. I still think to this day, that Croatian school program is one of the toughest in the world, and with integrating young people who finish school and college into business world one of the lousiest.

So, what happened? I had so many books to read which I didn’t like… Try reading War and Peace from Tolstoj in 2 weeks with school and homework, try reading 800 pages of Anna Karenina in two weeks with all other tests in school, and then try to imagine the impact this books are leaving. After I read Kafka’s Transformation and Process I felt sick in my stomach. All those books I mentioned are considered classics and are interesting, but not when obligatory they’re not. There were sooooo many books to read, really. Like 15 of them… I hated them. And my grade was depending on it. To a 17 year old, this is a definition of torture. While myself and few others actually read it, majority of class didn’t and they failed on tests. If I hadn’t loved books and been obsessed with my grades (MUST.GET.IN.GOOD.COLLEGE.) I wouldn’t read them also. Hey… There were far more interesting stuff for me than books. Boys. 😉

But I did get through, with periodic blues and depression from these books which are very hard to read. I still don’t know why the school plan gives that books as obligatory to read in such sort periods of time to people who are discovering who they are and who can’t possibly at that moment appreciate those books. I don’t get it. Someone explain it to me.

What I did do… I wrote. From when I learned how to, I wrote and wrote and wrote… I had a journal, I would write every day… I had two of them, big thick notepads filled with my daily life. I threw one away and kept one. I still have poetry there. Who knows, maybe that will see the day light someday. And I wrote stories. I was always a fan of detective books and romance books, so I would combine the two. I would write a love story but with a huge twist, unexpected. I was also writing “my book” that got deleted somewhere in the process of me not writing it anymore and computer dying… But what I wrote as kid was something I call “school writing”. You know, when you write how wonderful is the spring and how autumn has beautiful colors when you know your teacher will like it and you will get good grade. When, in fact, you couldn’t care less about spring and in autumn you feel like you have been taken away from the beach and sand and fun and now you’re sitting in the stupid classroom with boring stuff to do and you give a tiny rat’s ass about colors of autumn. 🙂 I have started really writing somewhere at the end of elementary (13, 14 years old). I wrote in my free time, I wrote because I wanted to. And I started to write freely in school when I joined journalist section (last year, age 17/ 18). I was rocking the free themes of those articles and having a blast. I still have those high-school newspapers and some elementary ones… I will post my proof later in this post. 😉

Also, we had a lot of writing involved in high school. I remember one time I wrote a school work and all my sentences were beginning with “I wish…” All of them. It was great and now, I wish (!) I have those school works. But they were in special notebooks that we would get only when it was time to write and give back at the end of two classes. What a shame.

My relationship with reading improved when I got in college. I used to go to library for a different reason now – to study in my own time on my own terms. It was quiet, almost like a task that needs to be fulfilled. I would meet up with my friend, or group of friends and we would go to study. Later, when I got so much behind that I didn’t know anyone I started going on my own in the nearest library. I will never forget it. It was winter, the heating was humming next to us few, each on their own desk, with their own papers, books and notes. After a while, I would stop notice the noise from the rest of the library and dive into my assignment. I would forget where I was… Other times, I would be restless. Not in the mood for studying. I would notice everything around me. I would hear the children feet tumbling in the section beside, their voices and attempts to be quiet, careful and all-seeing looks of a librarian guarding the reading room – place where we were. Although it wasn’t a room, it was barely a section divided by a wall of books. I would noticed if it was raining and watched how the rain drops fall on huge massive windows. And my eye would wander off outside, watching street lights and wondering how can it be so different in here and out there. It seemed to me like different life. Funny, isn’t it? 🙂

And here it is; My evolution of writing

First, article from school papers from fourth grade elementary school. That would be 9/10 years old. 🙂 My comments are in ITALIC 😉

My mother

Once upon a time not so long ago, there was a girl (still is) and she met a young man. They fall in love deeply and soon the wedding bells were ringing. (watching so many cartoons 🙂 ) From their love I came into this world.

I was crying all the time and it took a lot of care and work around me. My dad was making money for food and he worked all the time, and my mom took care of me. Beside that she was teaching me how to walk and talk. I was constantly hungry and waking up at night crying. My mom would spent hours to console me, and she had to get up early in the morning. It was even harder when I was sick. Measure her temperature, wash the bottle, no, not that, with cold water, put the tea, cover Iva, put her pacifier in her mouth, no, don’t cry! No, no… shhhhh. Put the wet compress… And not to mention how many more stuff my mom had to endure. She used to tell me often: „Small bird, loud mouth!“ (It is an expression in Croatian) She was dealing with all my wet problems in diapers. She looked after me, feed me, washed me… She helps me now also, but I am already big and I can do most of the things on my own. So I say to my smart and hard-working mother and all mothers that are like that big thank you for taking care for your children. A mother is something special, she would give everything for her child. And my mother gave everything, everything for me. (Oh so dramatic, little me.)

The second one is from 8th grade. That is 14/15 years old.

THE COLOR OF LOVE

Love isn’t just in one color for me, because there are more types of love:

Pink love is gentle love, it is love between a mother and daughter, between brother and sister. She connects us firmly with our parents, brothers and sisters. (I was going a lot in church; every Sunday a mass, every week a religion class in school. When preparing for the sacrament of Confirmation we were really in the church all the time. It was in 8th grade.) This type of love always exist in out hearts, never fades away.

Green love is young love. It got her color from spring, when everything goes green because just like spring, it comes fast and goes fast not leaving any trace in our life. (But we all remember out first crushes don’t we?)

Blue love is very important. She is created when two young hearts decide to come together in a unbreakable community of marriage. (Again, the religious tone in which I was raised emerges in unexpected place…) They come together like two streams come together in one big blue, clear river.

Purple love is a love of a friend. She is born between two honestly bounded friends.

Yellow love is love of light, hope. It is our love for life, to our very own existence.

And at last, the most important and most beautiful love in the world, the red one. Red like blood. It is a love between a man and a girl who are prepared to give their lives for it. She is like a big flame of fire in their hearts and can not be put away. (I think we had Romeo and Juliet for assignment that year.)

And so, I really don’t know what color is love. But, I do know a color where there is no love at all. That is black. (A-men to that young me.)