Neskaupsstaður is on the east of Iceland where there are no cities only villages, where most men are fishermen and the women work with fish, or at least it was that way when I lived there.
My dad on the other hand was the head merchant which was the highest place in the society at that time but my mom was a home working housewife with her three young girls, me the youngest. But my dad is an alcoholic so the mercantile went bankrupt and we moved to Hafnarfjörður which is on the capital area. I was four years old and didn’t fit in in the big city because the people in the east are a bit “rude” or well, we cursed a lot and well, I didn’t “act” like a girl.
Soon after our move to the city my mom and dad got divorced. So there we were, three girls, age 5, 6 and 8 and our mother, bankrupt. My dad was also bankrupt but got a loan to get an apartment in Reykjavík but we moved to a small apartment in Hafnarfjörður. Times were hard, my mom went to school to study being a carpenter because she was this strong, independent woman who wanted to show that she could do everything that a man could do, but also had to take care of three young girls, had to work for food but we couldn’t make ends meet.
My dad had stopped drinking and is now a recovering alcoholic. He met his future wife Ragnheiður who has two children, a little younger than I am and has been with her since. She is a little different from us, so we didn’t always get along because of different habits and lifestyles but we have come okay now. So my dads’ life has mostly gotten better. Years went by and when I was about ten years old things had gotten even harder for us in Hafnarfjörður. We, sisters, were doing good in school, had a lot of friends and everything looked pretty well to others, but we were always trying to hide how things were at home. My mom had gotten depressed and couldn’t work anymore and the social welfare agency and child care had started to come by now and then to see how things were and providing us with food and clothes. My grandmother also helped a lot but my dad wasn’t that aware of our circumstances but helped as he could.
She tried to commit suicides number of times and went to a psychiatric ward a few times for weeks. Sometimes people didn’t know that we were alone home but we could take care of ourselves. When someone did our grandma came to take care of us. I never thought my life was boring.
We had fun the four of us and we were more like friends than mother and daughters.
But then, two years ago my mother killed herself at the psychiatric ward. Us sisters were torn apart and I had to move to Keflavík, the town were the airport is, one of my older sister to my aunt and the other to another aunt.
Then finally in September we three moved back together in a rental apartment in Hafnarfjörður. The social welfare agency provides us with food and stuff and everyone have been really supportive and helpful. I think my life is great. I have a lot of fantastic friends, I go to a good school in the down town of Reykjavík and I live in a great country. My plans for the future are to work as a social agent of some sort to help the ones who have less.
Iceland is this small country where the people try to help each other as much as possible. We do not live in houses made of snow and we also hate our weather. We have the same problems and sorrow and pain as every other country and the second highest death rate here is suicide, right after cancer. People say it’s because of our short winter days that people get depressed, you know, because it’s like dark all the time. I don’t believe that. We have our racists and junkies and rapists just like every other country, but perhaps not as many of them .
Most of the people here are friendly and speak good English and would probably like long walks on the beach if we had one. We have a great sense of humor but I think we are the only ones who think that.
Times have changed since I was in kindergarten and now I’m not the one who curses the most, we all curse a little bit more than we should. Girls and boys are almost equal and sometimes it’s not a boy who is the class clown it’s a girl. Although we are a small country where everyone are related and everyone knows everyone I think we are a great proud country and we’re going to do something great someday.
0 comments:
Post a Comment