Emotions, where to begin..
Breath in, breath out.
I don’t think I would ever write something like this, but I feel I have to do it. And making it public can only help facing my fears even better.
This post is about my life.
When I was 17, I decided that my life was too controlled and couldn’t wait to be free. Took a plane and went on a summer english campus in Los Angeles. Was young enough to feel the fire in me: I was doing what I’ve always wanted to do. Till it was time to go back home. Jeez, if that was a sad moment: once landed in Milan, I did not want to get out of the airport. I cried, cried, and cried…so much.
“Weren’t you happy to see your family?” – I was. But my inner story starts before.
The story I was trying to forget and to hide to myself. These past 7 years around the world.. I was putting my story aside trying to create a new me, escaping from my fears. I’ve visited countless cities, lived in many countries, met so many people, dealt with so many cultures, I did everything I could do to live infinite lives in one. I could not stop running away. But away from what?
I’ve missed something in my childhood. And only now I am able to say this.
Ok, this is really hard to say… but I’ve missed love. I’ve missed love from one parent – and I’ve always rated the love i was getting as too material, too tough most of the times or too painful. How could love be painful? I don’t remember most of the things about my childhood, however I still do remember how I was feeling.
Was that kind of tough love something to run away from? How could it be so different from the other example of love I had in the family? How come?
My image of love was tough. Too tough.
At 19 I started a relationship that lasted for about 3 years. He was violent enough for that age, but he did say many times “I love you”. I believed in what I was hearing, because to me, it was normal: It was just an other tough love. Hard times came to the person I love more in this entire world, my father. Suddenly, those hard times had also a positive function: they woke me up. I was alone in my room, not knowing what to do, not knowing if I was about to lose the pillar of my life. And still, I was alone with myself. “How could a person that was saying I love you to me, not being there for me when I needed?”
Not ashamed to say it: my father had cancer, I felt in depression – nobody knew (or just few people): my boyfriend at that time? He didn’t even notice.
I woke up, and broke up with him.
This was the first part of my rebirth – and that’s where I began the longest escape of my life. In 2011, after my Degree, I left Italy. My companion? A heavy heart.