David is one of the few people that affected me in different ways on different stages of my life.
When we first met, our meeting had a different importance for each one of us. For me, he was just one more gym acquaintance that I invited for a drink someday. For him, I was the first new person to interact after a long time of rehabilitation.
And without knowing, I got to like this new acquaintance. I liked his curiosity, his straight manners, his pure eyes and laugh. And the time went by, and this new acquaintance became a good friend because I appreciated his honesty, his deep sensitivity and the demonestration of real friendship when I needed it.
And then I learnt about his past, and my respect grew. Because I could never connect the person I met with the stories I was listening to. And it takes a lot of courage and effort to change yourself so much.
And the time passed by, and we shared many stories, those kind of stories that noone remembers but for you are precious. And later distance separated us, but I kept on carrying him with me. And from that distance he managed tro hurt me, just because I was carrying him with me and he fall back to some previous mistakes. And I kept on carrying him with me, with many doupts for my thoughts for years without knowing and without wanting to know.
Until one day, years later, on my birthday I got a voice message from him. He sounded like one of those people that after a long coma he came back to his senses and he realized what he did. He didn’t try to explain, he didn’t pitty himself, but between his wishes I spotted his broken voice and his thirst to show me that he has now really understood. I spotted him online. I saw pictures of his life and seemed happy and normal. He seemed actually better than his best when I met him. We talked again and he explained to me his story. And this story once more changed me, and once more gave me hope and respect to those superhumans around us. But let him better explain to you:
I do not know if it is what they call the illusion of greatness or just the instinct of survival.
It may be something similar to the “imaginary friend”, a common phenomenon among only children.
So I grew up with the following fantasy that has accompanied me for 40 years now:
That I am the protagonist in a movie. As paranoid as it sounds, it is
the only reason I’m still alive today.
A movie that ultimately has all these key ingredients to be considered successful, with the exception of the non-existent sense of writing talent ..
First half
I am the birth of 2 teenagers in love and completely confused. A relationship that with mathematical precision was doomed to have a bad end.
My father was a drug dealer, a leading member of one of the most notorious Roma families with criminal activity in Germany. Even though tender and loving, he ended up serving life time after beating a policeman to death. Gave up on life and of course on being a father and a role model. I never saw him after my 4..
My mother is the youngest daughter of an 8-member immigrant family. Her father was an alcoholic and very violent, and her mother was constantly absent due to exhausting working hours.
I do not consider it a coincidence that she left home at the age of 16 finding an escape from a man who believed that he would offer her everything that her parental family could not provide.
As a child herself, she was called upon without any experience to raise her son with a single purpose:
To do the exact opposite of her own male standards ..
But perhaps the genetic predisposition to blame for many expert-based behaviors, perhaps the violent and deeply ingrained mechanisms in her lost mind, were not allies in this otherwise romantic endeavor.
In the meantime, mathematical accuracy has probably left its mark on the evolution of my personality.
As a minor I moved 12 times, 2 countries,
5 cities, 4 different primary schools.
I was “hosted” in more than 5 different families, while my mother did countless jobs, trying to grow up emotionally herself.
The years passed with the permanent denominator the lack of stability.
In the 1st high school now, I stayed in the same class, a consequence of this lack
and my inability to concentrate and obey any form of power — especially that which came from men.
Of course, I was never able to join groups.
As a teenager, I was fascinated by work at night. It was the most beautiful shelter, the perfect setting in which almost everything seemed ideal and feasible, without much effort. People were easy, situations quick, and exciting, and me, not doing bad with the opposite sex, I had already found my natural space, exactly where I could greedily suck acceptance and confirmation.
My high school diploma, my admission to the TEI and my short passage from the Ministry of Culture, were probably the result of my elemental selfishness and intelligence that I never lacked. Unfortunately, however, I did not channel it where it should…
Now an adult, although emotionally the person stops evolving, they say, from the moment he is addicted to psychotropic substances, in short and with numbers:
20 years in drugs,
-15 of them on hard,
Gasoline, Hassishi, Speed, ecstasy, md, mdma,
Ketamine, lsd, sissa, crack, cocaine, boom,
Heroin, Thai, ephedrine, vupregal, lyrica, tavor,
sleeping pills, methadone, subotex and a bunch of prescription drugs from thieves psychiatrists. I would even eat shit if they were able to numb me emotionally…
9 armed robberies,
24 distinguished thefts
-2 at a police station-
Purchase, possession and sale of drugs,
possession of weapons – use
Ongoing fraud
2 military courts for disobedience
27 adductions
3.5 years in prison in total
4 prisons
-15 months in military prison
-17 days discipline
2.5 years homeless in Athens
2 months psychiatric hospital
Hepatitis C
I5-unsuitable for military service –
1800 hours of psychotherapy
3 detoxification programs
3 relapses
And in all of this 5 totally toxic relationships and countless wounded souls,
frustrated friends, people who envied me and a mother who, while she had stopped believing in me, could not stop loving me…
Second half
“Your biggest fear is your most shocking desire.” Keep this advice only for you, a psychoanalyst told me about 20 years ago.
It was the same time I was working in a tourist resort and while I was already in an insanely passionate post-adolescent relationship, I met a completely normal and emotionally balanced girl who was vacationing there.
We flirted, fell in love, corresponded, met again and even planned to continue my studies in her city somewhere in the north of Germany ..
Of course we got lost or better I got lost in my passions..But there were some moments when I wondered what would have happened if I had dared that step.If I left and possibly me, like her, would be able to have a peaceful and stable life that was colored by frequent vacations ..
18 years and many “if” later, I had just been released for the third time and having felt in my skin that in this place where I am, everything was shouting go away, I open the messenger after a year and amid threats and people asking for their money back , I read a message with the date of dispatch on the day of my pre-trial detention. A day that by the way for me counts as the worst of my life. In ancient greek ragedy, the “machine god” had to come down and save the situation..And exactly that day, the same woman, 18 years later, wrote me the following:
“I hope you remember me, you will not believe it but I had an incredibly vivid dream. I had you in my arms and crying you said that you are in pain. So I took the courage to write to you and ask your news. Sorry if I upset you, I hope you are having a good time in your life .. “
How much light entered my soul reading this message can not describe in words that the human species has invented ..
I answered and I was torrent. I was thirsty for something to keep me alive, after all, when you have lost everything there is not much to be afraid of. And so I channeled into this communication all my shocking desire to live.
Effortlessly and completely naturally all the endless hours of psychotherapy, the efforts and advice of the real people who wanted to help me in my darkest phases were in front of me. Clearly, alive, ready to be put into practice.
The old love was rekindled and we soon met again feeling a mutual irresistible attraction, creating a perfect balance between 2 so different people.
The rest were procedural:
I judicially resolved the ban on leaving the country.
I went to OAED and found a job abroad in one day.
I painted two houses and collected the money for tickets and € 146 in my pocket.
I said goodbye to my mother and one of my close friends (the other then still did not want to see me even painted) and with a 20 year delay I got on a plane and left everything else behind. The fear, the stigma, the misery that plagues the country the damaged sidewalks, the successful family heads of my peers who drink coffee in Agios Nikolaos and do not stop talking about the ass of the girl passing by and to my neighbor who every time she greeted me I could clearly see the sadness in her eyes.
Today, after almost 3 years in Germany and having the ability to love myself, I have a wonderful relationship with my partner, I was cured of hepatitis and I work in the bone marrow transplant clinic of the University Hospital of Münster , soon starting my postgraduate training in nursing.
Proud as it goes, to be able to say that I belong to a group of people who have the ability to change destiny..To be able to sleep at night with a clear social conscience, to think as much as I can about the endless bullshit of the past ..
Whenever I can I travel, and so far I have not found anything that offers me a greater inner gain than discovering the world and at the same time myself ..
Maybe I will have children, maybe I will grow old, maybe tomorrow morning a piano will fall on my head, but what I have achieved no one can take from me anymore…
And in terms of mathematical accuracy and genetic predisposition, that’s all I have to say:
As long as there are dry treatment programs for addicts, as long as there are people who believe that the fate of man can change, so many small miracles will happen and with a little luck some lost souls will come back into play dynamically. Seemingly lost in the first half, subversive triumphers in the second.
In any case, another success story will have been written, even if it never becomes a movie…
David D.
