Début: Dragging myself along this crowded moorland

Let me start this off with a brief description of who’s behind this keyboard.

Charly, 23 years old from Italy, spent 4 years in the UK and now without a clue of where to go. Currently in Buenos Aires. I know I’ve got some problems in my little head, and worse, I’ve pretty much always known, ever since I could make any sort of projection of what my life would be in the future. Let’s say that was the age of 15. Little I’ve done to sort it out, but all that little never actually seemed to change nothing at all. Call it lack of perseverance.

The point nowadays is: how am I doing? Pretty bad. Am I enjoying life? Well, not. Enough said. Once I was asked that straight question and gave a straight answer, I couldn’t really make it up to the point of lying to me.

That simple question made me realize that I’ve blown up a (say, my only) relationship, which happened to be a partially long-distance plus long-term one. Maybe it should have never been there, it sure made me realize a lot of things. I was told yesterday: you are a negative person, you don’t really enjoy life, I need someone in my life who is brighter, happier, more positive, outgoing, relaxed and so on (you can imagine the rest). The worst part of it? She was and is right; oh and that she loves me nevertheless. That’s quite sad, actually. It makes me wonder if I lost time, if she lost time, if any time was lost at all…

It seems like we’re doing bad to each other. I bring her down, I admit I’m not the most enjoyable person on earth and I've got some negativity going around, especially when it comes to dealing with relationship matters, because I’m a little wrong in my head.

I actually need her quite badly; I need her in the wrong kind of way. I only started to feel better when she sent me a message afteer this sort of break-up; I am addicted to that point. I and she realised that I fell in love with her because she was the only one giving me attention at that time; the only one I felt I could open myself up to. I eventually didn’t open myself enough during the bad times in the UK: I did partially, she got me to seek for help, but she was so far away from actually understanding how I suffer inside. I will try to explain someday. Let’s just say she’s too bright a girl to understand how negative people must deal with themselves; I understand everyone’s got problems and I’m not denying she’s had hers, but I think mine became from circumstantial to real psychological; or maybe I was born this way, who knows...

I am afraid. I am afraid of being alone. I am not afraid of death. My therapist said it may come from the three times my dad was sick in hospital and about to die. I add, and I tell this myself because I didn’t actually tell anybody these very words, that I somehow fear hunger; I remember, as my father was sick and couldn’t work i.e. earn money, when my mom brought me around the supermarket saying “we can’t buy this, can’t buy that, we ain’t got enough money, son”. I can’t stand throwing leftovers because there is always a chance that I may need to eat them; thinking about the poor kids of Africa, of the favelas, of the poor people of Bolivia, Chaco, Misiones or Formosa, of the poor bunches in the Buenos Aires Conurbano or just of the junkies with the munchies of villa Saavedra or villa 31 here nearby is just a good lie. I fear I could starve, I stuff myself until I feel no hunger, until I feel full, satiated, I love eating a pack of choc chips or donuts as fast as I can just to feel the sugar rush. I love to sleep, to feel relaxed, take my time to do nothing. I am not positive, I am not proactive, I am clumsy, inefficient, impractical but I just love to take my time, for christ’s sake. That is explained with my indecisiveness, I’m hesitant and unsure of what to do. I mean, I sometimes take decisions, but they sure take their time.

I’m afraid to talk to people; afraid to give away something while talking: that I’m a foreigner, that I don’t belong, I’m afraid people will use and abuse me, take advantage of me. It all sounds to me like an angry lonely wolf who trusts no one and is always mentally prepared to defend himself by fundamentally escaping (which is what I normally do).

The fears I tried to suffocate on the surface apparently may have screwed up my subconscious in -needless to say- tricky ways and they are sneaking up, emerging from my shallow emotional sea at every corner, at every step which involves being fundamentally honest with myself and the others, such as the basics of life, the relationships with family, friends, partner and with your special and unique place, “home”.

As a starting point, I can quite emphatically say that I spent 24 years of my life failing at these basics.


I used to blame the place where I lived, but I believe now it is rather a lot to do with me; my friend Lucius Annaeus Seneca tried to tell me that some years (when I read his Epistulae) and centuries (I c. AD) ago, but it took me a fucking lovely bird -which I’ll have to give up now- to realize it.

Problem is, o Wilson, I start to feel old. I start to feel old as I feel that no matter how much of an encouragement a lovely girl can be, I won’t change. All the things in these almost 24 years I couldn’t do and couldn’t learn to make me feel good are gone, time flies and life steps go by so quickly. I completely mis-lived my teenage years, and I tremendously underachieved at being fundamentally happy in my early 20’s university years. I’ve lost the very most of the good moments that everyone else lived then, and they’re gone forever.
I may have even made my girlfriend lose time with me, all that sexual frenzy, that hormones fete of orgies and threesomes and weird experiences that you have when you’re really young and naïve.

I’ve probably never been young. I tend to feel envious rather than learn from someone; many times as things go wrong my first thoughts are negative; I escape problems instead of solving them. I just don’t have a good feeling about life altogether, I can’t see me happy in the future.

It’s not like I’m crying while I’m writing this, I’m just writing this, staring at the screen in utter disbelief.