From kindergarten to the first year of the junior high all went well, I had a normal life, serene, with my friends and my amusements.
One day though, I was about eight years and I went to the bathroom, my sister was there and I saw something that I didn’t understand. I went in and she pushed me away immediately.
I knew that something strange was happening in the house, my parents were worried, but I did not understand exactly what it was. I only realized later that my sister was using heroin.
I began to see my family situation in a completely different light, I began to see myself differently. At home there was a lot of tension. My parents were always fighting. Until they got to the point of separation.
My sister was very strange in my eyes, always pushing the boundaries. My father was incapable of handling day to day situations. Every day I saw him more anxious and depressed.
There were things that I saw that left me hurt and confused.
I preferred being outside the house. Away from all the mess and confusion.
The summer before elementery school something happened that it knocked me off balance. My mother took me to another city, when we moved I left behind my friends and daily routines.
During the summer she had to work and did not want me to leave the house because of what happened in the past.
When I returned home in September for the start of school, my relationship with my old friends wasn’t the same. I felt alone. This summer strange it wasn’t the same and we didn’t share good time together from this point forward we changed and grew apart.
They started to smoke cigarettes but not me and they didn’t seem interested in me anymore. I was left out of the group but at all costs wanted to regain their friendship. I felt alone. I could not possibly be alone…where was this going?
I did not like staying at home anymore, these were the only friends I had. So I started to steal cigarettes from my father. I carried the cigarettes around with me, not doing anything with them and just waiting for my friends to see and if I had any.
That day finally arrived. They stopped me to ask me if I had any cigarettes. I passed them out and since that day our relationship blossomed. That same afternoon Matthia rang my doorbell just like the past… it was beautiful!
They smoked and to be part of the group I had to do it myself, so I smoked but did not inhale, I didn’t like it.
So one day we bought cigarettes and I hid them in an abandoned house near my home. Then in a moment of madness, I broke all cigarettes that we had bought in an act of revenge.
After that day, I took refuge in the house. It didn’t make me feel good at all, I just didn’t want to be seen by any of them.
During the summer between my 2nd and 3rd grade I went on my first summer job to San Benedetto and worked in a hotel cutting bread and serving wine and water . I was barely 14 years old, the youngest person working there.
We were 15 waiters in total, we all slept together in the same room and that’s when I saw weed and cocaine being passed around. Initially they hid it from me, they were afraid that I would snitch but then I slowly gained their trust.
In the beginning I was only rolling joints for them and they promised if I continued to roll good joints for them they would let me smoke with them. That summer I smoked my first joint.
After that summer I met Mattia and Diego, I showed them my ability to roll joints. I showed them … I knew how to do it and they didn’t. It was the same situation a few years earlier with cigarettes.
It was up to me to have weed to smoke, to show it, to pass it on. The smoking acted as a door way for me to hang around with them.
We smoked weed in the morning, behind the bar, before going to school and in the afternoon where no one could see us. That’s how we spent our 8th grade.
After school I dragged Mattia with me to the summer job working at a hotel. I was 14 years and that was the best summer of my life.
Mattia and I were always together, we slept in the same room, we worked all day in the same place and we smoked a lot of pot.
Over the summer we should have enrolled in high school, but I decided to drop everything. I no longer wanted to study.