EPTI was born in Thessaloniki, the second largest city of Greece.My mother was an up and coming politian and my father was the head of a local bank.My father though, had a family long before he got engaged to my mother but he never managed to get a divorce from his wife without losing everything or so i've heard so far.Because of that,my father and mother found it better to not pursue a painful divorce for my father and the just didnt get married and eventually they split up but they remained friends! After that i am not even sure what happened but i guess my father got back with his previous wife since he had 2 kids aswell before me with his previous wife just for their sake ( i hope!).I never met my brother and sister from another mother but that is not the case here! I was raised by my mother and my grandmother since my father got back with his wife.I was hugely attached to my mother and grandmother due to the lack of a fatherly figure in the house and life went on peacefully while my father visited us once every 6 months or so. Until, my mother got very sick due to cancer and i found myself getting woken up by my aunt in the morning in our summer house telling me that my mother passed away after a lot of fighting. I was shocked, i though this was a cruel joke by my aunt since we used to pick on each other for fun.But unfortunately,it wasn't.I was just done with elementary school and i had passed the entry tests to join a very high prestige private school,although i was a crappy student to begin with just because i hated doing homework ( what a surprise, eh?
) All this happened 1 month before i started a 'new life' in a new school without knowing anyone and that gets pretty scary when you are at the age of 13.After my mother died , i got a lot of promises from my dad that he would take care of me and that he was there for me etc etc.This was pretty much the case for the 3 years of middle school that i attended since he had to pay and because due to me being unable to focus on homework due to the trauma from my mothers death, my grades were bad so he decided to stop paying for the last 3 years of high school.All of this happened while i was living with my grandmother.My father still lived with his original family and i don't even know if they know that i even exist! Basically,since my mother died my grandmother raised me and my father paied for school and that was it.Thanks to my grandmother i was able to find strength to get off the bed and go to school since i was an emotional wreck from my mothers death.
My grandmother was basically my mother.This woman deserved a fucking medal for being so strong and willfull.In a nutshell, this is her story.Ever since she was a little girl (back in the early 40's) she was born in a village close the border with Bulgaria,and her family were producing smoke crops and she was working there since she was young.She was one of the 7 brothers and sisters of the family ( back then families used to have loads of children because they could afford to! ) and she lost her father very early on in her life. After that, there were invasions by the bulgarians destroying everything on sight and a civil war, causing brothers to fight brothers.Her brothers joined the left side of the resistance ( which eventually lost ) and they all died one way or another.After the civil war and the german occupation, the greek army seized controll of the entire village and ordered everyone to abandon everything they had and leave the village.Meanwhile, all that was left from the family in the village was my grandmother and her mother.Her mother got very sick and she couldn't leave the village and died on the hands of my grandmother.So after that my grandmother left for Thessaloniki to pursue a new life.
This is where her she opened a new chapter in her life, leaving everything behind,dead brothers,lost sisters and a dead mother with a new outlook on life ( she was around 18 at that point). She found relatives in the city, where she lived in while searching for a job.Since the civil war was over and the right side won over the left side ( always fighting for politics , eh? ) local authorities made sure that since she was a sister of a left winger that she would never find a job since that made her involved aswell ( although she was never in any way involved in that).So after a while, unable to find a job she was introduced to a man, a general of the greek army at the time and she got married ( that was my grandfather).After the marriage she had 2 kids , my mother and my uncle. My grandfather left for a while since he was ordered to fight in egypt vs the nazis as a part of the alliance with the english. He fought , and he won. He was a warhero after that but due to his beliefs he gave a speech after the battle was won to his greek compatriots supporting the left wing and he was arrested as a 'traitor'.So he was exiled for a few years to an island and was stripped of everything that he had achieved , leaving him with nothing and no possible way of find a job since he was tagged as a traitor. So the burden was all on my grandmothers shoulders to bear. She worked as a nurse on several hospitals and on patients that needed help outside of the hospital that needed help for 50 fucking years.Along the way, she fell down she broke her hands,ribs,lower back but she kept fighting and kept working to support her family for years to come. After a while my grandfather passed from cardiac arrest and she was devasted but she kept fighting for her children. She would always put others needs above hers and thats what made her happy. Seeing the people that she loved around her being happy and prosper.Thats what she did best. She was a true saint.After i was born ( in '91) she took it upon herself to basically raise me since my mother had pursued her political carrier and she was pretty much always busy and my father was just out of touch.My grandmother was my everything.My best friend, my pillar of strength,my advisor, my father,my mother,my grandfather. She was absolutely everything to me.And after my mother died we made a promise to each other , that we would both look after each other for years to come.Thats how our bond became even stronger through the years.Since my father just paied for 3 years of middle school and then completely disappeared my grandmother was there to support me and keep my happy, even though her health progressively became worse year by year. So here we are, at the age of 20, having finished college on networking with awesome grades and everything was going fine the final blow was struck.I was sleeping for 15 hours straight for some reason, watching several dreams came down to the last dream that shook me to the core that day.I was alone in our kitchen with my uncle( my grandmothers son) telling him with tears on my eyes that i could not bear to see my mother die a second time.I woke up terrified with tears in my eyes and a horrible feeling in my heart. I went to sit on the bed were my grandmother was resting and as i sat down the bed broke.She got up and i asked her to keep the matress from going down so that i can try to fix the broken bed.She failed, i guess she got dizzy and the matress pulled her away and she fell down and broke her hip.I knew it! I couldn't shake that feeling from my dream that something would go wrong.I was panicking as she layed down patiently without making any noises from pain , although she couldnt move her left leg.I called my uncle and he came as fast as he could and we called an ambulance.We were all afraid of surgery cause at the age of 82 with so many other problems( i.e broken back ,arthritis,osteoporosis and most importantly diabetes) that this was a grave danger.Going to surgery that is.When she was prepared to go to surgery i had a panic attack, my first even in my life, i just couldn't breathe, couldn't shake this feeling from my gut that she would die on the table.So i left the hospital. After 1.5 hours i got a call from uncle telling my that the surgery was successfull and that she woke up! I was so ecstatic at the time until i let that sink in a little more in. I still had that feeling, this didnt not bode well.I tried to ignore it for a while since i was mostly afraid of the surgery ( consiously) and i though that all was going fine. After a couple of days the hospital was told us that she had to go since the surgery was done and their part of the job was done.All that happened meanwhile right on christmas time.So doctors/surgeons after the day that she got her surgery done left for holidays and she was left there with only nurses.After consulting a surgeon cousing who new my grandmother well he said that we should take her straight to our home since she would be up and running, so to speak in a few days.But that was not the case.She had diabetes and people with diabetes should go to therapy nursery homes after that to treat them with special care so that the patient doesnt get wounds from just sitting around all day on the bed and since she had diabetes the wounds wouldnt close fast and she would be in pain. But no, he said that she should be fine and she should just go home and rest.And so we did, for a week or so.After doing some physiotherapy so that she could star walking again, her left leg , where she got the surgery that , started getting necrosis near her ankle which was very worrisome cause if that spread she could get gangrene and she would end by losing her leg. We couldnt let that happen so we prepare to take her to a nursery home for therapy for a month or so.As i she was sitting on her bed we gave her food and she ate, and after my uncle left to go see the facilities of the therapy home we let her lie down.After 5 or so minutes she was asking for help.We lift her up, let her sit on the bed but she still couldnt breathe. She was choking and i was holding her and kept giving her oxygen from a mask till the canister was over! She kept struggling, and after a while she was choking on her own fluids and she passed away on my arms...Her son had just left to go out of town and he missed his own mothers death, while i was there holding her in my arms unable to believe what happened. I had just lost my best friends , my pillar of strenght, my mother, my father ,my grandfather.My everything.I kept thinking i failed.I failed to keep on our promise when my mother died that we would look for each other.She was there lying dead infront of me and i was terrified.And thus began the hardest day of my life leading up to now.
Me being drunk and writing this post on TL.My favourite community of my favourite e-sport that kept me smiling through out this ordeal.
My heart is broken, i wish i was in that coffin instead of her.But at least i know that she finally found peace.
And thats the story of my life leading up to now. I am left with nothing,i touched the end, i licked it with my own tongue, i was on the edge but at least i know that i cant go lower than this. I lost everything.
Special thanks to you guys, the sc2 community for being fucking awesome and keeping me smiling even through the toughest moments of my life. Also, extra special thanks to the homestory cup for being awesome and all the great casters making our lifes a bit less mundane! <3 artosis,tasteless,day9,bitterdam,incontrol,grubby and 2GD!!!
I hope this made you realise , even a little bit that forming bonds is everything and family should be always the number one priority! Don't fight with your close ones! You will live to regret that one day... as i have on multiple occassions.Now go give your parents a big huge for me, will ya?
Cheers and thanks for taking time to read this and i hope you all got something out of it.
PS: Sorry for my horrible english since its not my first language and i am drunk as fuck atm to choke my pain. Thanks again!
