Sonia Gillis lived at 8, Eighth Road York, I will never forget that every time I arrived at her house she would play a song by Gnarls Barkley entitled "Crazy" at -
Sonia had such an amazing personality, gentle, sensitive, caring and highly intelligent. She would drag me inside with a million things running around inside her head and she would play this song as loud as possible and dance around the room with me trying to tell me everything at once ,she was so excited at having a friend over to talk to her and to Jam.
This was her snub at the world, she was officially crazy, (listen to the words of the song) but she had long periods when she was "normal" and this is when I fell in love with her as a friend. She had such an animated and larger than life personality, she had live 3 lifetimes in her 33 years she reminded me of Janis Joplin. She died much the same way and their is no doubt she was as talented as her hero.
I tried to give her as much support as I could and I visited her every day for about 2months it was the most amazing two months of my life .Yous see Sonia was an alcoholic and she could knock back 3-4 bottles of vodka a day, add to that medication for depression bipolar disorder and shizophrenia and you have one mixed up kid. She tried so hard to overcome her demons but she lost unfortunately
She was a brilliant chalk and crayon artist and her work was quite dark and sophisticated focusing on domestic violence and violence against women as she had been through it all. She had 2 young kids that she could not have custody of, bought up by her parents and she only ever saw them about once or twice a month if that, her heart ached for them as she told me on the phone 2 weeks before she died.
Sonia was also a wicked singer and songwriter and one day we sat down and she wrote a song, we wrote the music and she stayed sober and lucid enough for us to record the song, I am so proud of this work entitled "Playing at Fairies" and you can find it at https://myspace.com/trevordunen/music/album/sonia-gillis-york-13086477/53561920
Sonia was well known around York, she would often be seen running up and down the street happily chatting to anybody who would listen, she just loved people and I don't mean she did this in a stupid way, she was an intellectual and could communicate on any level. She was lonely.
York is supposed to be a community, it's supposed to look after it's citizens but York knew about Sonia Gillis and her problems yet very few did anything to help her, ironically she died on Friday March 13th god bless her wild little soul. Thanks for standing by and watching her die York, I would expect nothing less.
