My solitude

At some point in my life, rebellion seemed to be the only answer.
Weed, alcohol, I also changed my look. Julia didn’t like this. I was in love with her, but I couldn’t give up on what I was doing to be with her. I begin going to my first raves and dealing drugs. I felt wanted, important, cool. I thought I had found where I belonged, my Identity.
By this time I had already chosen my path.
I flunked again at school so I went to work. There I met some French guys and with them I started using cocaine. In September, after the season, I went to France with them. After a few months I went back home because I couldn’t keep going, looking after myself.
My life was all fun and getting high, no commitments, no responsibilities.
One evening a best friend brought over some heroin and without thinking I took it and began using. I finished it all. I couldn’t feel a thing. And that feeling of nothingness, of emptiness I liked. It won’t be just that one time. I wasn’t alone that night.
Every now and then I would see my best friend.
With him I had a great relationship. He tries to tell me that I’m messing up, That I’ve let everything go, that I’ve pushed away all the people who truly love me and that I’m ruining my life.
He was one of the very few that still listened to and whose words would truly cut me deep like a set of razor blades. At some point I begin to see him less and less. Other friends told me he wasn’t doing well. But it didn’t bother me, I was too busy with my own bullshit. One day I saw him. he was trashed. He’d started drinking by then, a lot. And smoking. This startles me. He holes up in his house. A month passes. I see him around. He told the life of an addict sucks, that I had to stop, I had to go back to being the person I was before. His friend from the old days.
For the umpteenth time he told me, and I told myself. “Calm down, don’t worry. It’s not like I intend to live like this forever. It’s just a period, then I’ll stop”, we say goodbye.
The next day in the square I met a guy who told me that my friend had shot himself.
My world crumbled. He was the only real friend I had. He had always tried to help me, talking to me and trying to get me to change my life. He was always there and now he was gone. What made me suffer the most though was that in the moment that he needed me I wasn’t there, I’d left him all alone.
I was in pieces. I didn’t get high just for fun anymore, it became my escape from the world.
I had no idea what to do. I try to react to the situation and enroll myself in a private school, where I know some other people who can help me calm down a little. I graduated.
Giorgio, one of my new friends, suggests that we both go to London to live, something new.
I think about it , but in the end I remain at home. Parties, nightclubs, getting high, drugs and heroin. I was smashed. Nothing more than a ghost.
One evening my mother confronts me saying “ you can’t go on like this, you need help” and advises me to go to community. I went crazy. Absolutely not, I don’t need it! I’m only 19 years old, I’ve a life ahead of me and I still thought I could quit by myself, then go to London, to Giorgio.
I get through the withdrawals and find a job. At Christmas I got homesick and went back, quitting my job. When I returned to London I had no job. For a month or so I get by, but then my money began to run low. I ran into a person that I knew. He uses. I asked him for some help, I followed him and found myself living in an abandoned apartment full of addicts. I stay with him and begin to use heroin again.
I couldn’t handle it and began to get sick, starting to fuck up all over again.
It was like I couldn’t ever find a place of my own, a place to stay. I go back home again.
My family keeps their distance. I was frustrated, because deep down what I really wanted was for them to be proud of me. But I had done the exact opposite. I didn’t have anything, nothing and I was a nobody. I had lost my family and Irene, the girl I was with and that now didn’t want to even known me. I was alone. Completely alone!
One day my mother asks me to come to the house and she told me that my dad was sick.
He had only six months to live. He had a tumor.
I go back home to live. I was with him. There wasn’t enough time to put things right between us. One day I was alone with him.
“I wanted to be a good father,” he said, “do more for you. I want you to know that I’m proud of you “. He died the next day.
I wanted to escape again and I told this to my mother. She burst into tears and asked me to stay, to change, to react. I looked at her and I knew that my life at that moment was all there.
Help me, she says.
Together we decided that I should go into a community and fortunately, that day, I decided to come here to San Patrignano
-Alessandro-