If I could tell children something, I would tell them that nothing is eternal and that everything that comes into our lives teaches us. When they feel like it’s over and they’ve reached the end of the road, they should know that a new path will open up. Along that path, a new person will enter their life – someone who will always offer a helping hand. They will build and pave that road, both on their own and with the help of others, because there is always a way from darkness to light. My life is an example of this, as are the lives of some of my friends, and I will share it for all those who recognize themselves and for those others who should understand, says my interviewee, a beautiful young woman in her late twenties. Today, she has her circle of friends, business ideas and plans, maintains family relationships, and spends time with her pets. We agreed not to mention any names, not because she feels the need to hide, but because, unfortunately, this is not only her story. It is by no means rare or unique, and so it should not be read in that way.
How we turn children into easy victims
The story began soon after the birth of a girl and her year-and-a-half younger brother. She lived with her parents in Germany, where she was born, but her parents were Croatian by nationality, like she and her brother. Problems with her father, who quickly began drinking, gambling, neglecting the family, and abusing the mother, soon became her everyday reality. I witnessed violence and abuse throughout my childhood. Dad would beat mom and psychologically abuse her. My brother, mom, and I knew exactly when he would enter the house and when the chaos would follow. I would take my younger brother and tell him we were going to play hide and seek. He would hide, and I would go check if mom was okay. I couldn’t interfere, I knew I couldn’t say anything because any wrongly spoken word would get me slapped. I only once stood between my parents to protect mom. My father grabbed me by the neck and started choking me, and mom, to save me, stabbed him in the back with a small knife. This is when I realized that I couldn’t get involved in their arguments, that I couldn’t help. The realization that I was small and powerless deeply imprinted itself on me and became my belief, turning me into an easy victim. My brother and I started school in Germany, and when I turned nine, my mother could no longer endure. She packed the basic things, took us children, and returned to Croatia to her parents. She went through a painful divorce, and their relationship certainly affected us. My brother and I were often put in the role of messengers through whom our parents sent messages to each other. Whenever we did something, the negative traits would be attributed to the other parent, and we would hear how that character trait was inherited from either mom or dad. My father would sometimes take us without mom’s knowledge and return us late at night, without telling her anything. She would cry and call the police because she didn’t know where her children were, and when I asked him if he had told mom we were going with him, he would lie, saying that he had and that mom knew. He was a true liar, and for his family, love was an unknown concept.
What love and family meant, they first experienced after arriving in Zagreb, where their grandparents provided them with a home. Their aunt and uncle also tried to help, but the financial situation was tough, and mom had to work three jobs to cover all the expenses for the month. The girl started fourth grade in Zagreb. She knew Croatian only superficially, not enough for what was required in school. She was a quiet, withdrawn child who had neither acquaintances nor friends in Croatia. The children in her class mocked her for mispronounced words and sentences. They would mock and imitate me, not intending to help, but purely as an object of ridicule. I had a wonderful teacher, and that helped me finish the fourth grade. She wasn’t just my teacher, but also a friend, an educator, and a mother who spent a lot of time with me because she wanted to help. She stayed with me to teach me Croatian and help with homework. She knew that my mom worked and that I was alone at home with no one to help me. This support helped me endure and get through the fourth grade.
Insensitivity to other people’s pain
The children in the class didn’t call her by her name, but by a nickname they gave her – “Švabica“, and her brother also received a nickname that seemed very appropriate to the children. Due to his blue hair and fair complexion, they called him “Hićo,” after Hitler. Mocking her nationality was something she and her brother had never encountered in Germany. There, they attended a multinational class that included Germans, Croats, Turks, Macedonians, Roma, Italians, and Albanians. Most of the time, children of other nationalities were their best friends.
Then came the fifth grade, with new teachers, many of whom believed that after one year, the girl should be fluent in Croatian. Most of them didn’t care that she still thought in German and translated everything into Croatian, or that reading literature was a significant challenge for her, especially texts in Old Croatian or dialects. Peer violence intensified with mocking comments about her chubby appearance and crooked teeth. Only one girl from the class offered to help her with homework, but she couldn’t do much to change the situation, as she herself came from a family with problems. She had her own group of friends and had to be careful not to offend the group of ‘main’ girls.
The words the children in fourth and fifth grade said to me were terrifying. Whenever I could, I isolated myself from them. For example, after physical education, in the changing room, I would lock myself in the bathroom to change. I stayed silent so they wouldn’t notice me and leave me alone. When they asked where I was and commented that I was stupid for running away, I curled up even more and hid. I will never forget how one of my classmates, a ten-year-old girl, said, ‘Damn Švabica, German trash, she should go back to where she came from.‘ I stayed in the bathroom, hidden, until they all left the changing room, and then I cried alone, wishing I could escape the school. The girls were very cruel, telling me I was fat and pulling down my pants, mocking me for being ashamed to change in the locker room, and saying they would now help me. The powerlessness to do anything made me angry, and soon I was angry all the time, both at school and at home.
It happened that the teacher they had until the fourth grade passed away, and the girl felt indescribable pain, but she wasn’t allowed to cry. Her tears became the subject of new mockery because, after all, she had only had the teacher for one year. The pain of losing the teacher was unbearable. She had done so much for me. She would say, ‘Come here, darling, let’s learn Croatian and do the homework.‘ She knew that my mother worked all day and that I had no one to help me. She didn’t create any problems for me, didn’t call social services, and didn’t reinforce my fears; she was simply there to help. And now that she was gone, I wasn’t allowed to express my sorrow because it would become a laughingstock. I stood at the funeral, swallowing my tears, while grief was tearing me apart.
Soon after, there was another situation of peer violence, which escalated from verbal to physical abuse. The main perpetrators were the girls, especially one of them who wouldn’t give up. During English class, while waiting for the teacher to enter the classroom, she would throw all kinds of ugly comments, laughing and mocking her, until at one point, the girl had had enough. She turned to her and gave her the “middle finger“. The bully immediately turned to a classmate sitting next to her, who, due to her attitude and physical appearance, had the unspoken but clear title of “the leader” in the class, and told her that the finger was actually meant for her. The so-called “main girl” stood up, approached the girl, and verbally attacked her, getting in her face and accusing her of something that wasn’t even meant for her. In the end, she slapped her in front of the entire class. The girl didn’t shed a single tear. When the teacher entered, she didn’t say a word because she knew that being labeled a ‘tattletale’would make things even worse. The boys in the class, although they were far kinder to her, didn’t defend her. It wasn’t long before another episode of physical violence occurred. This time, two older girls convinced a third girl from her class to go to “Švabica’s” apartment after school because, as they made up, she was spreading lies about others. As always, I was home alone, because my mom worked, and everyone knew that. A girl from my class rang the intercom and told me to come down to talk. I didn’t have a good feeling about it since no classmate had ever rung my bell before, but when she wouldn’t come upstairs, I decided to go down. She was waiting for me in front of the building with two older girls who started accusing me of spreading stories, although to this day, I don’t know who they were talking about. I defended myself, saying it wasn’t true, but they insisted that I confess. They were very aggressive. At one point, a neighbor came out of the building, and when I turned my head to greet her, I felt a powerful blow to my face. The hit split my lip from the inside, and I bit my tongue, causing it to bleed profusely. They then let me return to my apartment. I tried to rinse the blood so my mom wouldn’t notice when she came home, but she already saw the bloodstains on the floor and my swollen face as soon as she walked through the door. She was terribly worried, grabbed my hand, and went door-to-door in the neighborhood to find the girl and her parents. I didn’t want to say who it was, I begged my mom not to do it because I knew it would make things worse for me at school the next day. But my mom thought she was doing the right thing, so the next day, she went with me to school and reported everything. I became a ‘tattletale’ and this marked the worst period of my life, a time when everything I had been going through and everything building up inside me led me to become suicidal.
Suicidal thoughts do not come out of nowhere
In the early days of childhood, while still living in Germany, the girl was an excellent student and athlete. She was involved in skiing and won medals. However, years of sadness and fear, peer bullying, premature maturity, and excessive responsibility completely erased her childhood smile. Her imagination and thoughts, left to such a burdened young mind, began to take a completely wrong and harmful direction. Since my mother was almost never home, I felt lost and believed that both, my father and mother had actually abandoned me and my brother. It was so necessary for her to talk to me, to at least try to explain the situation she was in. Perhaps I wouldn’t have fully understood the weight of the burden she carried on her shoulders while worrying about our survival, but it was even worse this way because children are not stupid. They very much feel the weight of problems, but they can’t explain them to themselves. I remember that evening when I was twelve. I had put my brother to bed and then decided to make Turkish coffee for my mother, which she loved so much, to cheer her up when she came home from work. However, when I brewed the coffee, I placed it in a glass cup and put it back on the stove to boil a little longer. The cup cracked from the heat, and glass shards and hot liquid scattered across the kitchen. Luckily, I didn’t get burned, but at that moment, I suffered a mental breakdown. All the thoughts that had haunted me in recent months, about how to end this life and this pain, how it’s possible to live like this, why anyone would want to live this way, what is even the point of my life, and what is my purpose in this life, came rushing into my head at once. I thought that the psychological and physical abuse had to stop, and that the best thing would be if I were no longer here. When the cup exploded and the coffee failed, it felt like nothing in my life had worked. I sat on the kitchen tiles and waited for my mom to come and see the mess. As time passed and my mom didn’t come, the stronger the feeling grew inside me that I needed to punish both, her and dad. I thought that if I took my own life, they would suffer and understand how my brother and I were suffering. I sat in the kitchen for a long time with such dark thoughts, and then I took the largest piece of broken glass next to me and decided that it was over. I felt that I had to do something to make both of them open their eyes and realize that it wasn’t just hard for them, but unbearable for us, their children.
While the story pauses for a moment to steady her breathing, I recall her telling me that she lost her faith in God many years ago, because if He truly existed, He would not have allowed all of this to happen to her. Surely, He would have protected her, her little brother, and the friends who were going through the same or even worse situations than hers. I pressed the glass to my veins, continues the story, and made the first cut.But it was as if some higher force turned myr head toward the door of the room where my brother was sleeping. In my mind, a picture of the worst possible situation began to form: my brother waking up, leaving his room to go to the bathroom, and finding me, his sister, covered in blood. To me, that thought and situation were unbearable. After all, we only had each other. I protected him, and he saved me with the care I had for him. We were the only ones who spoke and cried together. When I put him to sleep, sometimes Iwould fall asleep beside him, protecting him. I had grown up much faster than my peers. I couldn’t do this to my brother, I couldn’t leave him. I moved the glass away from my veins and turned to my leg. I made deep cuts on it. The deepest line was for my father, then one for my mother, and another for my brother. The cut for myself I made across all of them. This pain was necessary for me to feel alive, a pain that was much easier to carry than the emotional one. I waited for my mother in a colorful children’s pajama, covered in blood. Mother was in shock, screaming, crying, asking, “Why?!” I remained silent. In that moment, I was so emotionally empty that my mother’s reaction filled me, because I thought she had finally come face to face with the reality I lived in.
From a child’s perspective, taking her own life seemed like a fitting punishment for all those who had caused her pain for years. Instead of having patience and understanding for the natural course of the adaptation process, and solving problems and challenges through healthy communication, they chose verbal and physical abuse, pressure, and silence, completely ignoring the consequences. She explains to me that parents often think they know their children, but in reality, if we don’t honestly talk and spend meaningful time together, we don’t truly know each other. Only a few years ago, did the mother and daughter talk about the events of that night. In the meantime, so much had happened to the girl, and the mother hadn’t even realized that she had almost lost one of her children that night. They also spoke about everything the mother had gone through, from physical and psychological abuse by her husband to exhaustion from work just to provide for her children and meet their basic needs. She tells me that they both cried, hugged, and cried together, but there was a sense of relief and a deeper human understanding.
“Zorro the Avenger”
My conversation partner emphasizes how important it is to have honest and open conversations with children and how little, or not at all, society respects what children have to say. Children are forced to learn from adults, such as parents, teachers, professors, and other adult members of society, but in reality, adults could learn so much from children, if they would just ask and listen. Children need the freedom and the right to speak, regardless of their age, to stand up for themselves, to express what hurts and bothers them, and to say what they don’t want happening in their lives. But since all of that was missing in her life, the girl became a delinquent after this event. She was the one who started committing acts of violence. I became “Zorro the Avenger.” I wanted them to fear me, but not the children who were being bullied in any way, only those who bullied others. I walked through the world with the thought that if you intentionally do something to harm someone else, I will return it to you, and even worse. I became like a machine, my heart was cold. The only thing that mattered to me was survival. After I turned to self-harm and endured that moment, I decided with myself that I would survive, however I knew how. You know how they say, ‘fear is good when God gives it to you‘, but I had completely lost my fear. I had become my own worst enemy, and all those others were no threat to me, no enemy at all. I wasn’t afraid of other kids, teachers, principals, or the police. I walked around in baggy sweatpants, covered and hiding my body, wanting to be respected for what I had in my mind. I entered a circle of kids who were like me, kids whose parents didn’t have money, kids who didn’t have expensive things and big desires, who raised and protected each other, and who were raised by the streets. I smoked, hung out with older kids, and at 12 years old, with all the problems I carried and solved, I was out of sync with my peers. Their insults continued. Now they called me a bum, a junkie, and even worse names. Nothing had changed, I was just stronger, and I didn’t care. I started smoking weed, and that became my therapy. Then came the stealing, like, ‘We don’t have it, so we’ll just take it‘. I went through pedagogical conversations and talks at the police station for late nights out and everything else. I couldn’t stand the word ‘must‘. In my head, it immediately created resistance and the response –’The only thing I must do is die‘. The boys from the gang, delinquents like me, were my family, my protection. When I once stole a phone from a boy at school and the whole situation got complicated, the older ones among them protected me. I am still grateful to them for all those years I survived. The years of sadness, pain, and suffering turned me from a victim into a warrior. Because of endless anger, love and tenderness couldn’t break through. I didn’t know how to hug a person. My way of showing love was to protect someone from bullying. And for what I didn’t do, I said it was me. If someone needed to get a reprimand, I thought, ‘Give it to me‘. While other kids trembled in front of teachers, getting bad grades and reprimands, it meant nothing to me.
How much an extended hand means
After finishing elementary school, she enrolled in a vocational high school for hairdressing. She was the worst student in school, but the best hairdresser. After a school competition, she advanced to the county competition for future hairdressers, and her mentor was, as she says, the best teacher in the school. Please include the name of the teacher, we won’t mention any other names, but we should mention the practical lessons professor, Mirjana Mikulčić. She was the best teacher of all time. She was the one who encouraged all of us to talk and solve problems through conversation. Like so many times before, when they asked me if I wanted to talk, I said I couldn’t, and she understood that. She responded by telling me how important it was for me to know that she was always there for me. She fought for me and advocated with other professors. She recognized my talent, activity, and dedication to practical work. She was with me at the county competition and asked me to study the theory because she knew it would be a problem. I told her I was studying, but I wasn’t, because my point was something else. As a result, I performed poorly on the written part of the county competition because I only wrote my name and surname on the paper and left everything else blank. However, I created the best hairstyle, which was rated the highest and, as they said, was not only worthy of first place in this competition but also a top placement in an international competition. I didn’t study the theory because that was my way of making a point – that others should understand that theory is not the same as knowledge and that a person without theoretical knowledge can still perform outstanding practical work. However, when I saw the disappointment in my teacher, who was my friend and more than family, I genuinely felt sorry. As a token of gratitude to her, who fought for me and guided my talent, communication skills, and other qualities she recognized throughout my schooling, I started studying and passed the next grade with excellent marks.
She highlighted how important the role of professors and teachers is in the life of every child through another story from her high school life, in which a Croatian language teacher played a significant role. Her approach sparked interest in a child who had lost interest in everything, as well as in their faith in themselves and their desire to do something good for themselves. I loved the block class of Croatian language and writing essays. The teacher assigned the first topic, then the second topic, and then she looked at me, came up to me, and asked if I would write if she gave me an elective topic for the third one. I told her I would write and that I loved writing, and that’s how it went. For the first twenty-five minutes, I stared at a blank piece of paper, I needed time to get inside myself. And then it just started, I wrote down the story about myself, my childhood, my experiences, only changing a few characters and parts of the plot. I put in a happy ending, one that wasn’t the case in my life. I had the freedom to write for a full two hours, and then I asked if I could stay to finish for another school hour and the remaining five minutes of the school break. On seven and a half pages, I wrote my story. I could write freely, without the fear that anyone would call social services or that they would take us away from our mom and separate my brother and me. I couldn’t have stood that anymore. I got an A for the essay. The teacher asked me if I wanted to read it out loud, which I didn’t, but I had no objection to someone else reading it out loud. The students were in shock, wondering how a delinquent, the worst student, had written such a good and interesting story. The teacher called me to her desk and asked if it was a true story or if I just had a very good imagination. I answered her, as I always did when I was asked: ‘You decide for yourselves!‘ I always looked forward to that essay, and the teacher always gave me the third elective topic. I am grateful to her.
She explained to me how children cannot talk about what they are going through out of fear that things might get even worse, but how it is important to find a way to reach the child. Sometimes it’s through writing, sometimes through drawing – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the child can remain anonymous and hide behind imagination, with the possibility that it is just creative expression. What is important is expressing emotions that the child cannot release through confrontation or talking to others. She explained this even better to me with the example of her best friend, who is still like a brother and a member of her family to this day. My friend was in an even worse situation than I was, in elementary school. He grew up in bad conditions, surrounded by drugs, and his father committed suicide in a very tragic way. He fought to survive in that, by no means encouraging or healthy, environment. When he ended up on the street, he would ring my doorbell, and I would go down. I never asked him anything because I knew very well that he couldn’t talk, and what would be the point of questioning him about what had happened when I already knew? We would go to the park and sit on a bench. We’d talk for hours about everything and anything, laugh, dream about what we would be when we grew up, where we would travel, and what our lives would look like. That’s what he needed, what every child in such a situation needs – to just be there, to help them focus on the fact that there are different thoughts, a different world, and a different life for everyone. He grew up to be the best person I know.
Return to oneself
After each written assignment, she would say to her teacher: Thank you! Before the conversation ended, she emphasized to me how important it is not to forget that when we encounter children who are delinquents, children who swear without hesitation, and whom we label as “God, what ill-mannered children,” they are often, in reality, unhappy children, exceptionally intelligent, who have gone through life experiences that have taught them to develop mechanisms to stand up for themselves and survival instincts that other children do not have nearly as developed. These children are never good at school because it doesn’t matter to them, they are aware that the curriculum won’t help them survive the day or the days ahead. Therefore, the school curriculum should definitely include a class on mental and emotional well-being, teaching how to deal with emotions and freely express what we think should change. Instead of just reproducing theories and facts, there should be practical work and open discussions about the different perspectives from which children view life and the world.
Finally, what helped her stand firmly on her feet and become the person you’d want to know and, moreover, the kind of friend you’d want to have, was the lessons she learned. Each year brought new learning, deeper insights, and memorable experiences. I was thrown out of the house, met all kinds of people, and went through many challenges – built an ego only to later destroy it, lost my heart only to find it again. I discovered gratitude and regained sincere faith in God. Aside from a few individuals who extended a helping hand over the years, what also helped me was changing my environment, meeting different cultures, cities, and countries, and a turning point – when my mother was diagnosed with an inoperable tumor, and there was a high probability she wouldn’t recover. I was 19 years old. I remember the fear of losing my mother, of not having time for family moments anymore, or for relationships that had always been put aside. Every day, several times, I went to the hospital, sat by my mother’s side, combed her hair, and took care of her nails. She was so happy. She received 248 bottles of penicillin into her fragile body, and there was no longer any place to inject her. I told myself that if my mom pulled through, I would make up for all the time we, as a family, had lost, and I would give her all my love. Taking care of my mom became my only priority. I didn’t go back on my word, and I devoted my life to healing myself and my family. Today, I try to look with my heart, to understand, not to judge, and to contribute, in my own way, to making the world a better place. If we started the text with a message to children, then, in conclusion, we should add one for adults, that we need to understand how important it is to value what we have, to build and nurture our relationships while we can, while those we love are with us, because tomorrow it might be too late.
The publication of this text was supported by the Electronic Media Agency as part of the program to encourage journalistic excellence
