A Person

Yoana

Yoana lives on the first floor of my apartment building back in Bulgaria. She and I have been friends for 14 years now, and together we have been through many inspiring, and depressing times. 

I remember us sheltering every homeless animal we found on the street, desperately trying to heal the injured ones. Most of the times we were not allowed to keep our newly found dogs, cats, pigeons or sparrows inside our apartments so we would approach my dad and try to voice all sorts of compelling reasons to get a permission to keep them in my dad’s garage. Our innocent faces helped a lot. I can also recall us playing naughty pranks on friends and neighbors. We would hang scary anonymous messages on the bushes at the back of our apartment building, and then leave our gullible peers find them and get very terrified. We were mean little girls!

Later on, as we entered the teen age, we experienced love for the first time, all the joy that escorts it and all the pain that comes after it. Those were times when we felt happy and miserable, confident and insecure but it was exactly during those times that we realized how supportive we are of each other. Still in her pajamas, Yoana would slip into her shoes and come upstairs so that we can resolve last night’s drama or discuss the evilness of boys. 

Now that I am away from her, I miss her a lot. I am yet to find someone in whose company I can feel so free, so comfortable and safe and so ready to share anything hidden deep inside me.