I live to dance

I was absorbed completely by dance, it was the only thing that could really transmit my love and emotions. It made me feel at home and the beating of my heart was like nothing I have ever felt before.
But then I began high school, focusing on tourism. I got tired of being the “golden curls” girl and unleashed my free rein into the punk scene. I met a girl called Silvia which was very different compared to me, we were immediately compatible.
In seconds I changed schools, I changed my focus and stared going to an artistic college where I met the new group of people, all with artistic backgrounds, writers, artists, freestyle dancers, beatboxers, musicians as well as marijuana and alcohol and there I found my world.
My friend Silvia taught me everything, where to buy weed, what was the cost for smoking papers(RIZLA), how to roll a joint. After several experiences with drugs, Silvia was frightened and decided to turn her back on this group.
Rumors started to spread that I was frequenting the wrong crowds and that I was smoking weed. Elena and Nicola my instructors knew and began to understand that something was wrong. Elena decided to give me my own class to run and teach, she gave me something that gave me in return an incentive, something that I would be afraid to lose.
At fifteen I began teaching dance at the gym and at the same time joined a dance academy in Modena and which I attended for three years. Then I won a scholarship and went to study in Salò. Won competitions, I was placed second in my country.
My work was my world. The only I was going out was to do performances in discoclubs for my company and I stopped going out with friends. Everyone else seemed to be losers to me. Where they had to pay to get into discoclubs, I was being paid by the discoclubs to perform. But all of this was still not enough.

Everyday was a life of three different characters. In the morning I went to school, I the afternoon I was training with my company and in the evening I had dance classes at the gym..
At the dance company I quickly gained the nickname “Giada the ballerina” At sixteen I met Damiano, a thug, he was 4 years older than me and was already in trouble with the law and because I was underage I was always kept out of his thefts, muggings and robberies.
One evening I decided not to go home, I decided to stay out late like everyone else and that was the day that changed everything, since that time I have always done what I wanted without any exceptions.
My parents didn’t punish me and I realised they had no hold over me. I had my first contact with cocaine when I was sixteen at home with a forty year old acquaintance of mine.
Before that moment I only snorted cocaine because I wanted to be with the cool people, then the drugs spread around the workplace and now it was freely available and became second nature.
At seventeen I left the dance company because I started using heroin and I kept a distance, also I no longer wanted to show myself in public. If my name was associated with punks I would have lost all credibility to work within dance.
So I lost my group of friends and met an older man, we start going out and he introduced me to a couple and from there we started to sell cocaine and I used continuously. I didn’t sleep for days, at school I would arrive completely destroyed and from that moment I couldn’t let go of cocaine.

My life now was full of different personalities that I had created, personalities that I had to maintain and keep alive even if they didn’t reflect the real me. I always had to be the center of attention, the protagonist, I had to be considered by others because I was never considered by the most important people in my life.
I needed to be loved, but I would run away when I felt it. I could not handle the emotions, I was not accustomed to, I was frightened. All these things went hand in hand and clashed, everyday became unbearable for me. Managing all of these emotions was just getting to heavy for me.
I went to Milan to dance and I didn’t get to meet the dancer I would have hoped too but instead met drug dealers and pushers in the neighbourhood . In that moment, through people I frequented, I realised for the first time who I was, who I had become. I didn’t have the attention of dance teachers and dancers, but only that of drug dealers.

By now my body could not withstand more than nine hours at the academy, I wasn’t able to do anymore. At work I earned good money and I liked it, but I was always around looking for drugs, I wasn’t sleeping, I was violent and aggressive, I needed to calm down, so I began to use large amounts of weed.
One day I finished work at 3pm and had a course at 7:30pm. I lay on the couch and began to smoke as usual and at that point I found myself with a choice, smoke another joint and collapse or stop, get up and get ready for the lesson.
I do not know at that moment what happened inside my mind, but I smoked the last joint and collapsed. I woke up at 8:30pm, missing the lesson, it was the first time in fifteen years that I had missed a lesson, I felt terrible.
That was the moment when I realized that it was over, I had reached the limit, and after this moment there would be nothing else.
I went immediately to work and apologised to Elena telling her that I overslept. She looked at me, she had figured it all out, no words were necessary.

Giada