You are never given a wish without also being given

the power to make it true. You may have to work for it.

However. (Richard Bach)

2000: BEFORE EVERYTHING ELSE

Evening, morning or afternoon, perhaps - ladies and gentlemen; black or white, red or yellow, or even green, maybe; poor or wealthy, (un)happy or whatever You are - welcome aboard, sit your belts because we are just about - to start.

"You should know to adopt to time. You should be patient and you should please to evil time that you could enjoy into good time. You should always behave just like others want from you and from all of that pull out just right you need for yourself" (Marin Drzic)

I sing myself when from endless and sickly night

carry out palely softly face into crystal morning

and with glances swim towards meadow fields and to the waters

I sing myself , who die unnumbered times per day

and unnubered times rise up

Oh, God give me tired of transformations

transform into your bright unchangeable and eternal

star

what will from the far sky shy

into black pains of nightly desperadoes

(Antun Branko Simic)

25th OF OCTOBER 1977: BIG BANG

That what lies behind us and that what lies in front of us

is nothing to compare with that what lies - in us.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Well, this should be enough for introduction into a journey of one (un)conventional rebel - fight of David against Goliat someone said. Or, something like that. However, I don`t know, but I do know that this would be the right time to introduce myself. I am Marinac, Ivana Marinac and I steel God`s days in Zagreb, Croatia, a small European country, where I have made a decision to write this essay. Whether I shall turn out a hero of my own life or whether it that position would be held by anybody else, these pages must show how my life started .

I was born on one Tuesday. A clock begun beating what has shown as the first mistake, among many others of them in my life - because it wasn`t supposed to. Someone finally victorously whispered: "Something is wrong!" As the matter of a fact of the day and hour of my birth it was predicted to me to be unhappy in life. At least, this statement was the conclusion of the people who surrounded me and were interested for me before ours knowledge. Above all, I had a weird gift of the nature, what after all turned into an idea of my life with whom are gifted lots of "different" children who bear into wrong time between wrong people.

After I was born, I spent some time in hospitals, not because of a reason I was familiar with, but because of a reason everyone around me knew. At that time, You can guess, nobody knows what is to me. Few months later after I was still in the hospital mother of a Down syndrome child born right around those days when I was, surprisedly said to my mom:"She is still alive?!" This is short summary of classical stories of my own life and first in the series of stories doctors started at the time of my birth They thought that I don`t have - the brain.

Literally like that. But, as someone knows, each story has its own - but, You just need to find it. So, fortunately there was one but - doctor Z. She also didn`t know what`s wrong with me, but she was anxious to find what is.

1980 - 1982: IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS A WORD

Learning is finding out what you already know.

Doing is demonstrating that you know it.

Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.

It is 1980, the year when my first word was told and it was - mum. I remember that cold morning even now when I was laying in the bed which was constructed on such a way that my elder brother was sleeping above me. Many years after my dad used to say, that it`s no wonder I started to talk so late, because even now I stay a pretty silent member of society. I don`t talk before I am 110% sure in what I try to explain . But I would say that it was because I didn`t hear much, like experts would say - it wasn`t stimulative surrounding, although my mum and dad tried hard to put in the act the advice of doctor Z, which she gave to my parents. And which was: " You should work hard with her and never let her down. She will return it to You, so it depends of You!". My mom was teacher and knew how to do that.

Now this kind of reacting left me like a custom. There is no better feeling that you can ended disscusion when no one expect that. "Who smiles at last, smiles at the sweetest way!"

Now, we`re jumping in the 1982. The year of my first hearing aid. After this, nothing could stop me on my way to the stars. That year my brother Tomislav started to attend first grade of a primary school and my parents used to teach with him for the first few months. I was bored and I used to sit beside them and look what they were doing. Before Christmas my brother learnt how to write and read. So did I. The books and everything I could find in my home had only one warning: "Beware, Ivana is coming!". As I have said - nothing could stop me on my way to the stars.

1984-1990: GLORY DAYS

If you understand things are just right they are,

if you don`t understand things are just right they are.

(Zen Koan)

"Glory days" become the best period of my life. Dulled too. Why dulled? Well, after all these year wheter I want to admit that or not, I was among a few best students of my generation in the school. Why? Probably, because everything I always do I do it at the best possible way. But, in my case, everyone was, You guess - surprised. I go into music school I started to learn English, German, I… I wanted to do everything my brother did, and they all were - surprised ?!!

After some time it became too much for me. But, in one thing I wasn`t so good. It took me years till I finally found out why it is so. And change it into an advantage. That wasn`t an advantage that people gave me to so I could use it untill their feeling of surprise dissapeared, but the advantage to show what I really can. But, like George Santayana said: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I couldn`t find out why they are all surprised. And regret me.

1990-1995: THOSE DAYS OF ONE REBEL

So, everyone was either surprised either feel like need to regret me. I repeat this sentence and I add my silent wish from that period - to be like everyone else and to share destiny of any other child. I didn`t feel that it would be because I looked differently, I wanted that it happened because it was happening to - hm… any other child. It took me years to find out the way from these times. Till I didn`t learnt Santayana`s words.

Santayana`s words weren`t enough for something else - for the glimpse in the mirror. I had to promise to myself that I will change it when I finish school. School has been prolonged - problem stayed. For now.

When I look at that time now, I realized that I had something what was common and what will be common, probably till the end of mankind - teenage years, years when everyone has their own problems which are the biggest and the most unsolveable problems that the world has ever seen. Hm…

1995-2000: PEOPLE IN THE WHITE SHINING COATS

There is no such things as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.

You seek problems because you need - their gifts.

(Richard Bach)

At the beginning of that year I had to go to the hospital, because some problems with kidneys. The solution was to spent two weeks there and never ever to see people in the white coats. I, literally, hated them because everyone of them was interested for me. But they weren`t interested to me. Going back to the solution from the beginning of the section - the solution has became for the whole life. Actually, I was seventeen and thought that I knew everything about everyone at everyway. But I didn`t. I didn`t know the meaning of the word - life. I didn`t find it there and like everyone else I won`t, but I started to think what I want from it. I was in the 3rd grade of the high school and I didn`t know what I was going to work. One afternoon and a nurse were sufficent to put all together - something what I tried to do through my whole life, but then it got, like people used to say - a higher purpose. To treat people and to help them when they need most. Or when they think that they need it more than ever. I wished to become - a woman in the white shining coat! Inspite of all my hates and inabilities I wanted to become a doctor. Also, it was something what I could characterize as - a jeopardy, when I even remember that I don`t have - a full sense of hearing. Now when I think about it, I conclude that it`s good that I didn`t think of that, because I now know that I don`t even need to have it to be a doctor. But it was brave decision to get into that adventure.

That decision, finally, forced me to open old papers where it was written: Treacher Collins Syndrome. I typed it into keyboard and thought: Who is at the other side and is everyone else at the other side? But, every story has but. I found so many things and facts I didn`t now till then and - Amie. Some time before I went in for with thought that I could write something about me and put on the internet, but I didn`t know how to do that, not technically, than what to write. Amie came to me like a confidence to do that at the way I never thought I could or would - personal. I have become more open to the people showing everyone that I have not just a story, but The story that could help to someone somewhere in that wild wild world.

Every morning I stand up with one goal to achive: to pass through all what I have to do for that day with a smile on my face; and every night I lay down into my bed with all of that what I had to pass that day with a smile on my face.

And after that

On the knees between dropped pillows

You think

On death

O, child!

I won`t take you calm with new kisses

Into forgetfullness

I let that tears flow over your pale face

Tomorrow

Will calm down your heart

Which now desperatly beats

Tomorrow

When you go out between your young friends

With two dark shaddows under your eyes

Your young friends will wonder

But nobody will find

Hidden into bottom of your eyes

Pale star

Don`t cry child: night is blue winterly

Behind my footsteps will fall white high snow

(Antun Branko Simic)

Sure I asked myself many times: "Why, God and why me?!". After some time I found out that I don`t know is it better the journey or destination, but I do know that my condition helped me to found myself as a better person than I could be, reasonablier than the most of people are or will be, harder than everyone else is. Just what doctor Z. said to me. My friend wishes that I add: to put my hand into fire if need for friends - the most precious thing in the world.

The world is just right like we`ve done it on our own. Isn't it?

There is such a thing as perfection…

and our purpose for livings to find that perfection and show it forth…

Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom.

Everything that limits us we have to put aside.

(Richard Bach)