“This Is The Worst Time To Be Alive.”
Man, I’m sick of idiots.
My grandmother is Russian. My mom’s mom. She married my Grandad and moved to Bulgaria in her early twenties.
I don’t know much about her childhood. Only a few details. Her first memory is hiding from bombs. She used to live in a city where it was a common sight to see bodies on the street. People died of hunger.
Grandma has dementia now. She’s in a dementia care facility. Sometimes, she starts screaming in Russian and hitting the nurses. That tells me more about her childhood than she could, honestly.
I heard dementia happened when you were trying to forget. Along with what you’re trying to forget, there goes what you never want to forget.
My dad was born in communist Bulgaria. He went to school in communist Bulgaria. He got into university, studying to be a Water Facilities Engineer. The moment he got accepted, the government promised him a 10-year work contract and a discounted apartment. It’s how things worked back then. So he married my mom, and they had me.
Two years later, communism fell. My dad’s contract and apartment dissolved into thin air. Democracy is a hard thing to adopt when a society has been kept on a leash for decades. Crime, corruption, destruction.
