There are things in life that you are born with and things that you learn. You feel them with a sensational energy of interest. After some years when they don’t apply to you anymore, the sensation is lost but the knowledge remains, but sometimes in life situations can take place in which these sensations can be rekindled. To make you feel like a child again
Neither friends nor friendships.
Friendship for kids is like a game, you meet someone like Marco, Giulio, Stefano and Valeria and who knows, you joke, you draw with them and you play, I mean it happens naturally.
Then years pass, perhaps you change or remain a bit like a child inside and you have to start understanding who you are and what a friend should be for you, what you want or you can do with a person who cares for you.
I have always struggled.
I was not stupid or retarded, I was a bit different . . . my classmates were playing football and I was mind travelling, drawing epic battles on sheets of paper.
Always lost in my world of colors.
I struggled when growing up, not having understood who I was, I found myself wanting to change friends, to look for something that ultimately was not mine.
Marco, Giulio, Stefano or those of whom were in the old ”ballotta”(in bolognese, it means group) I have known them for almost 13 years; I’m 19 now, you can calculate . . . They were there when I was 6 years old going to school for the first time and at the end they were always there when on the 17th I entered SanPa.
I was 13 when I “left them” to change group.
I had some friends, of good family, rich in short and I started hanging out with them.
I was not rich and had many different interests than theirs; This kept me a bit poised and I always remained a bit confused and insecure . . . I was slower than the other kids. I don’t think they ever liked me, for sure they never respected me, but nevertheless I persisted on staying with them, unable to have the balls to say no, I smoked my first joint.
The following year I saw things more clearly and I returned to my old friends who welcomed me back with open arms, with all the affection I needed.
I had failed that year at the science school, which was when I hung out with those rich friends . . . but it was not for me.
I changed school, my friends even found me a beautiful girl, I finally felt respected, Claudia (my girlfriend at the time, didn’t want me to smoke joints) anyway, with her I did not need to.
I dedicated to her a passage about two meters tall that said: “I love you Claudia” just to make you understand my case.
At some point, however, something broke, I had everything I needed, but there was something there that carried me away in the dark and did not make me feel comfortable with what I had.
I met some guys, a little older than me, who smoked a lot of joints and some heroin on tin foil.
I made the big mistake (among the many that I have done a little later) to leave my friends and little Claudia to act like a fool with those others.
From then on it was a mess even though I thought I was feeling great.
The confidence that I lacked and that I always missed, I had gained from Heroin and joints making me not feel bad and becoming the cold person who, three years later, entered into the community.
I did not cry or feel happy from things that make you human.
But there were always those old friends, close to me, I kept them apart but they were there for me as they still are now.
They don’t mind about the mistakes that I’ve done, what matters is what I am now, what I am doing and I am becoming, and I care about them.
And to know that they are doing well makes me happy.
To Vale (my friend) I drew an owl. She likes them . . .
This for me, is friendship. A drawing made from the heart knowing that sometimes they think about me . . .
Leandro