Shades of childhood..

While reciting, since I was very young, thought that drama would be my life career, one day all this passion collapsed, as I understood the subject of poems recited by me was to praise the wrong person.
I was a very little girl when I started loving reading and reciting. About 5 years old, my aunt would teach me poems to learn by heart, different ones, but mainly patriotic themes.
I know that today everyone would be surprised to hear such a thing. Children nowadays
learn poems about trees, pigs, flowers, and bunnies even in Albania, but at the time, it was not exactly like this.
Everyone thought I was so talented that, whenever there were feasts, I was asked to
recite in front of my schoolmates and teachers. There were around four hundred people paying attention to what I was reciting, how I would play with my voice in lower or louder tones, with my arms accompanying the context of the poem and face expressions as well, since I used to feel very strongly every single word coming out of my mouth. I was only 8 years old .
From a very early age, I knew I wanted to be an actress. Yes, I know, all little girls dream of such things, but in my case it seemed that the adults all believed in me. I had won second place in a nationwide competition for young talents when I was five. People always clapped their hands once I had finished reciting. Also, my parents were so proud of me that whenever we had guests, or friends coming to visit, I was the little robot. You would push one button, and with a big smile, the show would begin!
I would go on reciting whatever mama and daddy wanted to hear from me, of course,
from 1980 to 1990. During this period poems about Enver Hoxha were the fashion. Poets around the country wrote poems to honor him, poems which where very sad and
melancholic. I would even end my poems by shedding tears in the end. I would make my
audience roll some tears as well because the “dictator” was dead. So I became part of the local theatre as well, acting in small plays. I loved drama, theatre, and poetry and I was a very dynamic participant in different activities. Little girls on the street would identify me with the name of the character I had played the last Sunday theatre the“Pioneer’s House”.
But one day everything changed. This very special day, Enver Hoxha‘s statue that stood in the center of our capital was demolished by angry crowds of people, mostly students, that where sick and tired of the dictatorship, extremely determined to change the system and to bring down this dictatorship that had turned into prison a whole nation. The unfolding events made me happy on one hand and very sad otherwise. I started searching for better explanations. I was not six years old any more, I was thirteen.. I do not know actually how sad I was. I can not measure it, but in a very silent and gradual way I stopped reciting. I didn’t like to learn poems by heart anymore. I did not like to be on stage either. Something made me think that it was not just that. I did not just stop reciting, I also forgot the art of reciting.. The other day one of my professors asked me to read aloud a poem. I realized that my voice came out just as though I read a newspaper.
Something has been buried deep inside me and I have to struggle to revive it.