My music

From an early age I felt something inside me. Emotions. Dreams. Like music. But I still couldn’t realize it. The only thing I knew was that the world was traveling at another speed, with other times whereas my dreams and I, had to adapt to others.
In my house there had always been a lot of rules, my brother and I could hardly argue. Whenever there was a problem, even a petty one, we held family meetings that could last up to four hours. A wrong answer, a slammed fork on the table: all behaviors over the top, corresponded to endless sermons, we had to listen to learn. It was the classic family that on Sunday had to go to Mass, sport was compulsory, and the air of tranquility that hovered in the house was just seemingly, but in truth it was incredibly heavy. I suffered a lot, but I could not express it. I kept it for me. Out of fear, or perhaps for the general tension, I let the discussions fade alone, pretending to hear what they said. In fact I was listening deeper within me, I was listening to the music I had inside of me.
Besides school, swimming and everything that my parents obliged me to do, I also attended the musicians’ high school. I’ve been playing the guitar ever since. However, my passion for music has always been a personal interest: I liked it; I did not need someone to compel me to play. It all started thanks to my brother and his friends, who already played. Sometimes I tried his guitar, I liked it; so once, when the band reunited to play together, I went there too and I started to strum along with them. Since then I had never stopped.
Meanwhile my father had started to attend courses on communication and body language. I didn’t know why, I was not interested. This wasn’t a problem for me until later on; because as I turned 12 he forced me to attend the course with him. I didn’t want to but as usual I said nothing. At that point, by the way, it actually was him who taught and directed the lessons. I was absolutely not at ease. There were topics far too distant from my reality, I did not understand. Later they explained to me that those courses were intended to solve the situation at home, with the very problems that weren’t visible to the rest of the world, behind that seemingly calm aura. By then it already was too late, because in the meantime I had been around people a lot older than me, they were the ones who attended the courses, who were also invited home by my father so that we could go on talking. By now I was living in a dimension that I completely didn’t belonged to. I was dealing with different ages, different speeches and different mindset from those of my peers. Slowly, without realizing it, I had changed.
With my classmates, my football team, everywhere in short, I no longer felt good. Although I was among others, I felt alone, as if everyone else had different things in mind. I was used to talk only to older people, adults; the talks of teenagers like me did not interest me that much. I could not relate to them in the right way, I felt different, inappropriate for the context in which I was. I was15, but I felt as if I was 30 years old. How could I like what they liked?
In practice, I did not care what I did with my father, I did not care what I did with the other guys… the only time I really felt myself was when I was alone; me, my guitar and my music. It may seem strange, but once I played the guitar for fourteen hours straight. It was my world, it was the place where I existed as I wanted to, where that music I felt inside came out, showing me that it actually existed. So I began to go out on Saturday nights with some classmates with whom I felt better with, the “right” types, who listened to Hard Rock; with some of them I began to play at my first live on stage, to play in clubs at night. Like them, in order to feel comfortable, I tried my first joints, discovering that it didn’t take much to stay in company with tranquility, I was at ease everywhere with anyone.
It was all I wanted: to be just like that, live that life, only listening to that music. That I had inside.
My father, to find a solution to this situation, tried to pull me by the ears: forcing me to become a football referee as my brothers were. By then he couldn’t force me. I started to smoke joints more and more often, to the point that every time I had to be at home alone with him, the first thing I did was to go to my room and light up a joint. Basically I was always at home, but always out of my head. After a while I found other subterfuges, such as University (that I never attended), to hide myself in my world of music, friends and substances. I found out about other drugs, I was always high; I went on doing this until one evening my friend died. After a night spent clubbing he left our group and entered a car with another guy, but he didn’t make it back home. They crashed. After the car accident, my life had increasingly worsened. I went to live for two years with my brother, then my father, and then I lived alone for a year. In those years I devoted myself to only one thing: heroin. I started using it since my friend’s car accident, I could not resist. When I used it, I could not feel what was happening around me. I didn’t feel my problems any longer. I did not feel anything anymore. That bitter and metallic taste took me somewhere else, away from myself, detached from everything that was happening to me. The problems, my family, no aspect of my life could any longer touch me. At first I thought that it was the solution, I thought I would eventually feel better, even if I never smiled. I just took drugs. Then one day, after many years had passed, I realized that I was really in a bad shape. So out of nowhere I started to cry in despair when at home; in a moment of clarity I realized my situation. I was skinny, annihilated; and on top of that I was even left completely alone. I was so messed up that I thought it would be best for me, if my life had been cut short. There was no point for me to live any longer, why go on suffering? Unfortunately my self-awareness occurred in the wrong moment. I looked in the mirror and my eyes transmitted nothing, they were empty. I sat on the couch in the dark. I prepared what I had to meticulously; in two seconds it was all set. I was holding a syringe, filled with my last dose, being too much for a person. I was ready to fall asleep forever. Suddenly, just before proceeding, I thought about music, the one that I had inside me. Many years had passed, I felt it away from me, aloof, like many other things that I had decided not to listen to anymore. At that moment, in the shadows near the door, I saw my guitar leaning against the wall. It seemed to look at me. It may seem trivial, but at that moment I thought, “I cannot do this, who would otherwise listen to my music, that has been with me ever since I was a kid?” It was a stupid question, simple but at the same time it was such an authentic thought, it was so true. So I placed everything to the ground, I picked up the phone. Then I called my parents. Ten days later I started to attend the meetings for my entry to Sanpa.