The Exchange!

People live with dreams. It is one of those things that keeps us going, giving us hope, giving us courage, giving us desire to keep on going for beautiful things. Those beautiful things that everyone fights for in their lives, put in a war every single day just to achieve those dreams, as long as they come close and make them a reality. And what is more of a beautiful morning than waking up after a beautiful dream that you hope to turn into reality very soon. Ah, these mornings are always the best. Because you wake up with a smile and hope that one day you can actually make it happen.

As a teenager, you usually dream about a lot of things. Because as a teenager, you always think about how things are going to be in the future, where you are going to end up, what kind of job you will have or what kind of life you are going to have for yourself. As a teenager myself, I love having beautiful dreams at night of things I want to do in the future. Because these dreams keep me going strong from the hard reality that sometimes, we as teenagers live in. Reality is beautiful and harsh sometimes but we use dreams as an escape from that reality. By the way, sorry I did not introduce myself. I am Sonia, 17 years old, and I am in the last year of High School. I am about to tell you my story, a story that practically defines my life, my reality and probably a lot of people can find themselves in my story. I don't want to spoil it for you. This is where it all begins.

So it was a great Monday morning, which typically does not happen. Because Mondays come after weekends, where you get used to relaxing a bit and doing something entertaining. But it is what it is! I had a great dream that night to be honest. It is my desire in the future to become a doctor. I know it is a hard school which needs patience and lots of hard work but one day I am sure that I will accomplish that. And in that dream it was a few years ahead in the future working in a hospital and saving people's lives. And in my dream I was highly praised from everyone for what a great doctor I was. And I was smiling all the time, until I heard my phone's ringtone waking me up from that dream. The ringtone that tells me that I need to go back to reality and make that dream happen.

As for my background, I come from a normal family that comes from Eastern Europe countries, my mother is Albanian and my father is Croatian. How did they meet you are wondering? Well, due to war in the 90s, both of my parents migrated to the United States where they firstly met. They both were around their 20s and so they fell in love with each other. They were both working at the same Fast Food restaurant to bring in some money for their families illegally and while working with each other, they got to know each other more and so they decided they wanted to be a couple and in 2 years they decided to marry each other. What a great love story at the beginning, right?

Well it was just like that, a great love story for a while. At first, my older sister Katherine was born. She was the first child and of course my parents went crazy about her. And so a few years later, here I came. My parents' romance was peaking after having 2 kids and things actually were going pretty well until something happened that changed everything. Something that would tear up what used to be a great love story. My mother got sick and was diagnosed with breast cancer at a moderate stage so she needed to follow some medical treatments. Now you wonder what all this has to do with my story?

My story is just like a domino effect. It did not start now, it has started way too early. Every decision, every moment had a domino effect that has led until here and will lead to other things in the future. But we will catch up very soon. Everything comes clear later on. So, as I said, my mother was sick and she needed treatment, but my family still was kind of illegal here in the United States. We were still in the process of becoming U. S citizens, and so we did not have enough money to continue with my mother's treatment all the time. Back then I was around 11 and Katherine was 15. My father lost control. He was not the same person as before. Although in front of our eyes, he did not do anything bad, every night I used to hear him coming back drunk at home and screaming at my mother as if it was her fault that things were not going the right way. And for a while, I did not see my father very often, as he had to work two jobs and started coming late at home because after work, he used to go somewhere to drink his problems off and then come home and debate with my mother. So for me, it wasn't a nice childhood but my sister was always there making me smile and acting as if nothing was happening, treating me as a princess. But we, at that time were in a critical situation financially and things were not looking as if we were living in a small place, in an area where most of the crimes would happen and lots of people were poor.

My mother was tired most of the time but she also had to take care of us but she was not capable of working. So my older sister started working too to at least help the family a little bit. And it actually helped us somehow. After a while, my mother was cleared from the doctors, so she could continue therapy less often as before. She did not continue the therapy. So she actually started working again too and after a few months, we changed the area we lived in and went somewhere safer for all of us. Still not a big place but the area was safer. So what happened to my father? My father did not change at all. He was still angry, he was still coming home drunk, and at that time I was wondering what was wrong. I used to hear him scream and say that he was a Balkan man and drinking is for men and women who need to stay at home and not complain. Back then I thought he had a problem with my mother. But actually it was a whole different thing.

Years later, I entered High school and things were looking normal, well the new normal, because my father most of the days used to come home drunk and complain and scream about everything. But we got used to it so it was not a big deal. We still were thinking what was the problem though. We got through the hard situation, everything was almost normal as before. So what was our father's problem? Why in his head did he still think that something was wrong? What was he complaining about? Everything became clear one day. A friend of my father, who was a childhood friend, came to our house and told my mother some things about my father. Back in our tough days, my father had borrowed money from some gangsters to pay off some of our bills. Okay, nothing wrong with that, we will fix the debt I thought. Wrong again. That was not the problem. The problem was that my father had developed a gambling addiction that had put him in more trouble. So the money he borrowed did not go to pay our bills, the money went for gambling. It gets a lot worse though. He did not borrow money only once, he did borrow money multiple times, and not because we were in debt or we did not have money, he borrowed money to pay the debt to the casino owners and also gamble more. So for more than five years, our father has borrowed tons of money from the gangsters, promising them to pay the debt but actually he was still gambling, still losing money and that is why we were somehow still struggling. Because at our home, there were 3 people working lots of hours. Why were we still struggling? Now we know the answer. His friend told us that my father was in a difficult situation and wanted to borrow money from him due to the fact that he could not tell anyone else that he was being threatened by the gangsters and needed money to at least pay some of his debt.

Thankfully now we knew. Now we had to figure out how to confront him and see what we could to help. What his friend told us would be great to fix our family issues. Now that we knew what was wrong. we had a chance to fix everything, right? Absolutely not. Things would go worse than they were before. After his friend told us the story, my mother said that she would talk to our father face to face and she would discuss everything with him. So my father did the same routine and came home drunk and late. My mother approached him and started telling him that she knew what was wrong and she wanted to help. At first it seemed that everything was going well, until my father decided to slap my mother and tell her he did not need any help with anything because he could fix everything by himself. That is when I realized that my father was not the same person who raised us with all that love and comfort. He had changed. Those things had changed him. I remember my mother going to her room and closing the door so she could be alone and my father drinking and smoking in the living room. Later that night, my father came into our room, kissed us both,I could listen to his footsteps and his smelly breath with anger, left a bag there and left. One thing I remember was that he said that he loved us. The next morning he was nowhere to be seen. It has been two months. We have not heard anything from him. He just disappeared and left a note stating that he was sorry and also that we could use the money that was in the bag and that everything would be okay.

There was the last time I would see him. We are trying to get used to his missing presence. We asked basically everyone. His coworkers, his friends but no one had seen him. The police also were not able to track anything. My father had just disappeared. Just like he was dead or had gone somewhere. I still think about where he is. What is he doing? Is he alive or not? Why did he do that? But seeing my family fall apart like that, ruining my dreams of having a perfect family just like it was before when we grew up, with laughter and smiles every day. Just like that, one of my biggest dreams was shattered. Even after the hard times, I was still dreaming of my family going back to normality again. Even that dream was blown up by the wind. But that does not mean that I should not dream. I will keep dreaming. Dreaming of having my father back. Dreaming of becoming a doctor. Dreaming of making a better life in the future.

Now you might be wondering that the disappearance of our father would be the end of our problems. This is what I thought at first too. But as the domino effect keeps on going on, another domino has fallen and it is time for another to fall. This was just the beginning of what I would call the worst nightmare that would challenge all those dreams that I had as a teenager. Domino after Domino, things were getting worse with time, but we were not warned yet. So as for the time being, I just had to get dressed for school, with a smile on my face and still dreaming of the dream I had last night, thinking that everything would be okay, because from now on, everything would get better with time. Time heals everything when it comes to you, but when nothing it's on your hands, time makes it worse. And so with time, another domino would start falling…