KATJA

It is Friday and I am sitting in front of Brussels city hall, drinking beer and for the first time in the last 5 or so years simply enjoying my day. I shouldn’t be drinking any kind of alcohol because of my state and because I am on medication but I couldn’t help it. I ask you not to think that I am some kind of alcoholic, I am not. I hadn’t had any alcohol for at least one year and when I had it, it was also a beer, just one beer. Of all the people I know what alcohol can do to your soul, if you start taking too much. This beer reminded me of time I spent with my only girlfriend Katja. I was young, only 16 or so. She was one year older than me. She was the most beautiful girl I have ever met.

It was the winter of 1980. The first time I saw her was just in front of Bronx ZOO. I couldn’t help myself not to stare at her and she noticed. She came to me and told me that she likes my smile. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I didn’t even know that I was smiling. Girl walks up to the boy and actually starts speaking like she has no worries in the world. And she didn’t had any, she was the happiest person I met in my life, she was pleased with everything and got anything she wanted without ever being or acting rude. She is probably what kept me going over all these years, her happiness and her will for life and her way of showing everything in a good light. We were at this party one of the following years. We were drinking beer and having fun. This was the first time we made love. The biggest mistake of my life! I was and I still am a carrier for AIDS. It doesn’t affect me but I can transfer it to anybody who comes in sexual contact with me. When her parents found out that I had AIDS they fore bided me to ever see her again. And I didn’t. She died 15 years ago. She was a fighter. She fought the dieses for almost 15 years. My mother died the same year I found out Katja was infected. That year, 1984, everything in my life started going wrong and I never found a happy day or ever probably will in my life.

Early life

I am now 43 years old. I live in Belgium where my psychiatrist lives. U.S. Army paid this man to cure me from my mental illness which is in every mean bad, to put it lightly. I have been on medications and psychotherapy for almost 12 years now and I can’t say that I am felling any better. I will try not to bother you with my life in this period of time; I would rather like to tell you how it became of it.

I was born in Davenport, Iowa on the summer of 1964. I lived there for ten years with my parents when my father killed himself because he owed money to people to who you didn’t want to owe money to. My mother than took me and moved to New York City. New York was a big change for me. After all I was a little child without a father and with a mother which slowly started becoming a drunk. I lived in Bronx, in an apartment so small and wrecked I couldn’t turn around in it and see anything beautiful, anything comforting. There was nothing good for me in that apartment, that Bronx or even that city. I had no friends and nobody at school liked me because I was a fatherless child and I always kept quiet. I would give anything today to go back to those days, and I would never thought, not even in my wildest dreams that I will later call these days the good old times. When I was 16 years old, still living in a same small apartment with my mother who I didn’t recognize anymore because alcohol ate her soul, I went through what I will later refer to as the best time of my life. I fell in love with one year older girl named Katja. She was an immigrant from Poland, and my god she was beautiful!

Hello!

Hello! My name is John White and I have decided to share my experiences from Rwanda. I’ve been a soldier and I went through a lot of terrifying situations. My shrink told me that I have to try to put my memories on a paper. I’ve never liked to write on a paper so I made a decision to share me feelings and memories with you. I hope this will help me to recover from my experiences which made me unable to lead a fulfilling life..