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30 maggio 2022

Sono stanco

 

Seduto, in questa stanza. Solo, con troppi miei pensieri ai quali non riesco a dare veramente forma e senso. La doccia non porta consiglio, ma solo un’altra scatola dove nascondere le lacrime. Lacrime di coccodrillo? Forse. Lacrime di una persona che si sente all’angolo, stretta tra mura che non le appartengono. Non penso di farla finita, se non altro perché ho paura del dolore. Sono stanco di soffrire per mano mia. Ho tutto quello che potrei e dovrei desiderare eppure sento di non aver nulla, che tutta questa sabbia può svanire all’istante. La rabbia verso il me stesso che vive al momento senza pensare al domani è seconda solo alla delusione dell’avere questa parte in me. Se solo riuscissi a capire, se solo riuscissi a spiegare al mondo e a me stesso cosa provo e di cosa ho bisogno. Le lacrime non scendono più, la mia faccia non ha più la forza di stringere gli occhi e sperare che il dolore venga spremuto fuori come il succo di un limone. Sì, perché questo cazzo di cibo deve sempre essere in mezzo, come se fosse l’unico vero motivo che mi tiene legato al reso del mondo. A volte mi sento pazzo, altre incompreso, altre ancora mi sento solamente un bambino viziato che cerca attenzioni. Ma di quante attenzioni deve aver bisogno un ragazzino troppo cresciuto di 28 anni? Non dovrebbe essere già una persona matura alla quale il mondo è circa chiaro? E invece mi ritrovo come al solito davanti ad uno schermo, a scrivere righe che probabilmente, e per fortuna aggiungerei, nessuno leggerà mai. Lo sfogo che tanto mi è stato detto di trovare si nasconde, mi sfugge. Nel mezzo della ricerca di questa benedetta valvola, trovo solamente ulteriori occasioni per ricordarmi perché mi sento così, perché ogni giornata passa e finisce con lo sdraiarsi a letto cercando di dimenticare tutti quegli incubi che infestano la tua vita da sveglio. La notte diventa un toccasana, l’unico vero rifugio dalla tua testa, da quei pensieri che da cosciente non ti abbandonano per un istante. Ed è per quello che ti ritrovi sempre a dover affogare nell’alcol, o in qualsiasi altra dipendenza tutto quello che senti, perché la dipendenza ti permette di uscire da questo circolo, seppur temporaneamente. Così facendo però, caro Matteo, ti crei questo vortice completamente fuori il tuo controllo che, se all’inizio assomiglierà anche solo ad un venticello, pian piano ti porterà sempre più a fondo. E più a fondo vai, più la luce si affievolisce, più la vista si appanna e più le speranze sbiadiscono. La notte è buia, il silenzio assordante, sono molto stanco. Anche fisicamente. Sento che sto per crollare, e col castello di carte che è il mio corpo, la mia luce si spegnerà molto velocemente a seguire. E a quel punto resterà solo il ricordo della persona che sono stato. E che ricordo lascerò di me stesso? Ogni persona avrà una visione diversa, e per la maggior parte potrà anche sembrare positiva. Nessuno conosce la realtà e io voglio tenere i miei scheletri ben chiusi nell’armadio, portarmeli nella tomba anche dovendo. Perché ho fatto del male, cose che solo al pensarci mi viene da vomitare. Questo è quello che sono? Sono veramente questa persona vile che pensa solamente a sé stessa o c’è di più? C’è di più di questo ragazzino che porta una maschera da talmente tanto tempo che ormai non conosce più il vero Matteo? E questo famoso vero Matteo chi sarebbe? Forse è questo che mi sto chiedendo, e forse so che la risposta mi fa troppo male. E fa troppo male a tutte le persone accanto a me. Soffro, perché sono egoista e perché in fondo vorrei trovare il modo di sparire senza far del male a nessuno. Il lavoro, la tesi, l’università, le relazioni. Sono tutte queste solo scuse per nascondere qualche problema molto più personale? Nulla sembra essere veramente ciò che voglio, ma ogni volta c’è un qualcosa che mi spinge ad andare avanti, convinto che la prossima sarà veramente la volta giusta. Ma non è mai così. E probabilmente mai lo sarà.  

8 gennaio 2020

What is it?

It is 2020, nothing changed, ghosts from the past keep following me, not giving me the space to breathe, letting this awful weight just slowly crushing me on the ground. Happiness is just a far memory. Plans, ideas and all of what I wanted to become to this day don't matter anymore. Writing about the same topics, same problems, same soldiers going out from the trench just to die from the world's machinegun fire. Every day I wake up thinking that it can't get worse, that the fall is already too deep to be darker. It is easy to feel lost like no one can or ever could understand you. Contemplating all the small things in your day seems normality, as you do just before you start for a long trip. But it is different, cause I know that every time I keep my focus on something or someone it could be the last. Cause that's where my mind pushes me. I'm holding back, I'm pretending is all fine, or at least find enough to go on and have projects. It's nice thinking about the future. I feel good even thinking about the problems and the worries that could fill my days; that would mean that I survived. I don't know if I should talk about depression, cause depression is where hope is gone, were feeling just disappeared to leave space and time to nothingness. I do still feel, and until the day my heart beats and my lungs breath, I will be alive. But it is getting grey. Everything. Trees are losing color, food just doesn't have the same taste, water is as dense as mud. Eyes burn, legs shake for no reason and from nowhere cry breakouts are part of my daily routine. Is this life? Is this growing up? Is this just my faith slowly dissolving? I wish I had answers, actually at this point, I would even love to have real questions, things that really matter to me. Nothing matters anymore. I love my friends, but they will go on without me. Family won't understand, but at the end of the day, all the fault will be on me. As it should be. Going to sleep later, hoping to never wake up. That's what my dreams are made of. And I hate myself even more for this. To disappoint everyone, once again. In 25 years I tried to commit suicide 3 times, always for love reasons. At least this time it isn't just for this. It is because I failed. I failed to live in a society that would like me to be tougher, hard-skinned and just a person that I will never be. I tried to seek out help, but the fact is that I'm the only person that could help myself right now. I believed in the wrong people, I believed in the wrong dreams, I've chosen paths that were never meant to be mine. I see happy people around me, and I can't help myself being even sadder cause I have more and I can't be as happy and contempt as they are. Why am I like this? Why am I writing this online? Do I want to let people know? Then why not just share it with my friends? Maybe I don't want anyone to read this, but then why publishing it here? It's true, there isn't a single person probably reading all of this except me (luckily I would add), but you never know in life.
I wish I had answers, I wish I was stronger. Maybe one day I'll change. But I have to give myself the time to do that.

25 dicembre 2019

Merry Christmas... maybe

How to start? I didn't really think I would ever write here again. It is Christmas and Merry Christmas to anyone that will ever read this, even to myself in a couple years' time. Always there is a reason that pushes me to write here: sadness. It is a sadness that doesn't really come together in this Christmas time. Well, actually that's the thing. In this month you see everyone around you smiling and feeling happy and hopeful about his life. I've been one of those people too but today I just can't be like that anymore. Of course, I have plans, of course, there will always be something pushing me to give my best. But I just can't deal with my emotions anymore. It's about love, work, life, friends and all of them together. It is not something you wake up with, it's more of a feeling of insecurity that slowly but steadily shifts in a sense of desperation and inability to go on with your life. One of my few "recent" posts has been about suicide and suicidal thoughts. I'm grown up from those, but probably not in the way I wanted. Days I just wake up thinking that it is not worth it, that at the end of the day whatever you will ever do will be forgotten or misunderstood. I was hanging up cause I found a person that I thought could lead me out of all of this. It has been almost 2 years since my past relationship and I tried to give myself time to heal and wait for the real person that was made for me. We found each other and there was something I can't really explain between us. As you might know, I have been burnt multiple times by love and people, but somewhere inside of me I always kept some hope that the next one was going to be the right one or at least a person that was able to deal with me and could be honest. And once again I got disappointed. She will never read this, luckily, as the previous ones didn't. Cause she would just see even more how miserable and stupid I have been since the beginning. I believed in her, I believed in us. I wanted to give her all I could and to show her that I was exactly who she needed and she was the same for me. I never had the time. She decided that it was not worth trying, it wasn't worth the wait. I wasn't worthy. I cried, I got angry, I even texted her something stupid. Like we all do when we are in pain and have no idea how to deal with it. It saddens me knowing that she will never know how far I was ready to go just cause I believed in everything she does. Last time I talked to her I had the courage to tell her, even knowing that those were wasted words as she took already her decision, that I never met such a person like her. Those, useless, boring words, that every person uses and that she replied with an arctic cold "yeah, right". The same reaction she had when I said those three infamous words. Those three overused terms that most people confuse with a lot of different feelings. I am not any different, giving them to people that deserved them, but never meant that much to me. There is just one person that I can freely say ever loved, as much as this sentence costs me. And she was the second. And it hurts. It hurts that I wasted my forces to be the best for her. And you might say that it never works when you want to change for the other person. I partially agree. When you enter a relationship you necessarily leave parts of you behind, because you want to be the best you can, and cause you want to change first of all for yourself. She is the motivation. But she will never know this, she didn't just want me, it's so easy and yet so damn difficult to accept. Add to that the fact that I was ready to put on pause everything I planned in these years for her. Before meeting her I was sure I was going to leave Italy, and for her, I was ready to stay here, cause I learned from the past, and distance destroys relationships, I don't care what people say. But here I am now, doing a job I don't even enjoy anymore, in a place that I don't feel mine and with memories of her all around me. It is just getting too much. I am not that strong. I have never been and will never be. The only thing I know how to do is run away: from pain, from that sensation that the problem isn't in the others but is just in you. It is just me. Just this weak, physically grown-up little boy. There is something missing in me and I just can't find what it is. For how much I try to figure it out I just get more and more of the worst of who I am. Blaming humanity is never the answer, especially when you should realize how much of a selfish person you are. It's easy to see now. While writing this and re-reading what's above it's obvious: just take a look of how many times I say "I". As if the entire world should follow me and deal with the bullshit that my life is.

It is for all these reasons that the time has come for me as well to let all of this go. To change drastically my life and the way it all works. A real cut is needed. Physical, mental, just letting all of this go and try to restart all over again.

I decided to go after the Silk Road, and follow it from Venice to Shanghai, in a 1,2 or even more years, without catching any plane.
I started talking about it with my friends and family and between support and calls to the psychiatrist (just kidding) the response was a lot like "are you really sure?"

The fact is that no, I'm not sure at all.

But I need to act quickly otherwise I'm not even sure anymore I will even be able to have another Christmas.

But hey, life is good for most people, so I'm happy for all of you. I really am. I wish I could see what you see, I wish I could see all the reasons you see to keep fighting. Maybe I just need to disappear for a while, maybe I need to just disappear forever.
I hope you'll hear from me again :)
In case this won't be the case just please be happy, and never forget to love the people beside you.
Merry Christmas.

2 agosto 2018

Perfection

What is it and why are we so obsessed with finding perfection in every aspect of our own existence. The perfect relationship, perfect job, perfect food, perfect life. Truth is that as human beings we always look forward to what is impossible and unrealistic for us. Perfection is unachievable in this world and the constant hunt for it develops a morbid and unhealthy dependence on results as a measure of our own value. Trivial desires get lost on the way, as they won't help to reach the goal. With them humanity gets lost; we become more like machines and less driven by feelings. Love for what we do doesn't mean as much as 'be the best at what we do'.
Or at least that's what it looks like on the surface.
Since High School, I always loved to think one step further and try to climb the building to have a different perspective. So what is it about the obsession for perfection? On the way to perfection, we learned to enjoy the closest hints of it. But that simply means finding beauty in what, at the end of the day, is imperfection. And it is in this that everything we work for comes down like a cards castle. We do realize that a woman's body cannot be perfect by definition. But we enjoy it. We enjoy the irregular shape of their nose, we enjoy the silky pleasure of messy hair on our face. Those hands that rotate around, finding their way to our cheeks, freezing them at the beginning, but for then leave space to a warmth that persuades us to let our restrictions fly away and just fall into their arms. There, where even the giants want to rest, we find feeling with every sense that we are alive. We touch the smooth and velvety thighs, we smell peaches and vanilla in their perfumes, we hear them singing and like Ulysses we decide to abandon ourselves to the sirens, we see them in all their beauty and in all their shyness to expose their bodies. We love them. We love the imperfections we see and we love those we don't see. 
Imperfections are also in a fine wine, aged for years, where oxygen ruined the freshness of the wine but enhanced other aromatic compounds. That red vivid color developed and twisted in different shades until that intense brick red that we can see nowadays. Is it perfect? Perhaps not, but it is still one of the best voluptuous pleasures drunk with a rare fillet mignon on the side. 
So it is food. Chefs nowadays always look for the perfect combinations of flavors and plating techniques. The perfect quenelle and the ability to replicate the same movement over and over again having always the same exact results. In a professional environment, it comes natural, as we want to always be at the top of our game in serving the guests. But that is not what most of the people love about food. Having in front of me a perfect plate that looks dead it's not filling me with desire. Cooking mustn't become a factory exercise. Cooking and eating can be art, and it is indeed an art of imperfection. It's a craft of knowledge, passion, and feelings. In every dish, a Chef should put his past, present and future. Me as a guest I want to eat and understand what is the story of this meal, I want to have memories from my past passing by and flashing me like thunders in a hot summer. The imperfections are what make it real, what will make it unforgettable. A slightly runny ice cream with strawberries will make for a much more interesting and playful meal. It will create memories that otherwise would just be linked with good food... But who remembers those ones?...
We eat with eyes too, and as a woman, a course mustn't be perfect. 


Perfection is overrated. 

22 giugno 2018

Suicide

It is with a sad post that I'm coming back to write in my personal space of extraordinary ineptitude towards life. A couple of weeks ago I got shot by the news that my hero as a teenager committed suicide: Chef Anthony Bourdain. I just can't think about a person that influenced more my life as a human, as a chef and, at the end of the day, as a food lover. I looked at him like the example to follow and as the person that never let his personal history (that if you read any of his books you would know about) come in between himself and the love for food and life.

Or at least that's what I used to think.

He has given up to all his monsters hidden in the closet. He managed to change many lives, but he couldn't do the same for himself. And that's what hurt me the most.
We will never know what was inside his head to think that this earth was not his place anymore, but most of the times we wouldn't understand anyway cause the choice is not rational. It's not based on any concept that regulates our lives. It's something deeper that only who came close to can really understand.

And I did.

The first time I thought about suicide was back in high school when I wrongly thought that the world hated me in any case and that all the love I was receiving from my friends was simple compassion towards an insecure and useless teenager. At that time though I was too weak and the thought went away for a quite long time. It came back stronger at the beginning of my university career, but even there it was more of a desperate attempt at getting some sort of attention. But then the real shit happened and to be honest this is the first time I found the strength to even write or talk about what happened. It was May of 2 years ago and my at the time girlfriend decided that I wasn't enough for her anymore. I was all of a sudden lost, alone and with my university graduation pending a couple of months in front of me. I cried, and cried and cried until I didn't have a single spare tear. Then the desperation stopped and all I felt was emptiness. Going out and talking to my friends were just two of the different masks I was wearing during the day but that fire that once was burning so strong inside of me was getting weaker and weaker. I didn't want other people to think I was going through all of that and I started isolating and closing the armor around myself, maybe trying to save that small flame from the strong wind that the outside world had become to me. 

And the day came.

Imagine this: you, the bridge, some light rain during a summer warm night, no one close enough to talk you out of the situation, listening to your favorite music cause fuck going away with a shitty soundtrack. I'm sitting there for maybe an hour, on the edge between life and death, and the only thing I could think about was if I had to suffer more or if that solution would have been painless. As I'm thinking and listening to Hurt by Johnny Cash I remember looking up to the sky and feeling every raindrop gently touching my face, as giving me the last caresse from this world that at the end of the day I thought I didn't deserve. I stand up and I tell myself that that was the right thing to do, that people probably will never understand but that it will be their problem after all. 
At that moment I was literally a couple centimeters away to the end of my worries. But that's where I was wrong. Suddenly the song ends and here I am, with the noisiest silence I have ever heard in my life. My heart was running and both my legs and arms became heavy. Too heavy to keep on. My sight starts abandoning me too and I enter this tunnel vision where the only thing I can see is the darkness that surrounded me. It was happening. 

Bye papa, bye mama, bye all my friends that had to deal with me for so long, bye to all the people that believed in me, bye to my dreams, bye fun moments, bye late nights talking bullshit in front of a beer, bye my dearest snow that I would have liked to surf for one last time, bye all the good food that I haven't yet tried, bye Parma ham, bye all of the countries that I planned to visit. Bye.

Bye my loved one, the person I was ready to give my life for, the person that made me to not do a postgraduate course just to follow and stay beside for the rest of my life. Funny, ain't it, that the person you thought was your life has been the same to end it.

Bye.





I don't know how long that moment was: it could have been a couple of seconds as well as a couple of hours. Something was just missing, there was something wrong. a rock in the mechanism that didn't let me go. And so I came back, I headed home with nothing going on on my mind. I went to bed and I stared at the white ceiling. I was empty, I was confused and once again I confirmed to myself that that was and is not my destiny.
And here I am today, still keeping up and still wondering what kept me here that night.
Probably that thing is the only real difference between me and Chef Bourdain. Details that saved my life and didn't spare him.
In these days I see different people trying to justify what he did, cause we need a reason. A powerful gesture like that without a reason is frightening our columns, but the truth is that it just can't be explained. We can talk about it and we can try to help the people that are still alive and struggling every day, but we can't find reasons. That's way above our power.
I want to give the last bye to Anthony, for everything he represented to me.
He taught me how this world is truly beautiful and how in every corner of the globe there is some sort of hope for things to go better. If I'm still here telling my experience partially is because of him, cause that little sparkle that he lighted in my heart never stopped bring me somehow to the light instead of falling in the black hole.

I thank you and I wish you peace in your next adventure.

Rest in Peace, Chef

20 gennaio 2017

Here I am again...


Wow, what a change! Returning back, trying to put some order here and to write again and again. This blog was written in Italian, but I guess Italians don't really care about blogs anymore... So here I am with this different language, different style and hopefully some interesting topics (not for today). I started this blog as a solution for my emotional problems with a girl, but after that everything changed. I lived different situations, with different people and in different countries. I finished University and I found out who I want to become (maybe). And with all this change I just decided that I need a new start! Not about topics or blogging style (cause that's who I am) but more about the reasons. I'm not writing anymore for somebody else, I won't write cause I feel bad for someone. I just write because I like it, and because I want to share my world with some far person that will never know me. There is something fascinating in this sharing of ideas with people so far from your life. I'm not going to tell you my history anyway, because I see that google translate is actually somehow working, sooo you can just press there if you want to read some old stuff... Even though I don't really think it's a good idea.

Anyway let me start with the first short thing I want to talk about. What do you think is the most difficult thing about moving in a new unknown country? Language? Culture? Loneliness? Somehow you're right, cause all of them are really important, and especially in the first months could lead you to many cries and depression. Buuuut the truth is different: the climate! As an Italian living in Bulgarian trust me when I say that going from a warm and sunny country to an icy, cold and cloudy place it's really painful. Every morning I wake up wishing to see the sun, but facing the reality of -15°C and meters of snow and clouds and wind and storms and... Ok, maybe it's too much, but still it is for real a big deal! 
As I said this was a short re-re-re-re-restart of the blog, hopefully I'll find time in the next days to update.
And meanwhile as always I leave you with some music to let yourself relax for a bit.

2 ottobre 2016

Ma non dovevi scrivere?

Sì, lo so, come al solito ho fatto passare ere dall'ultimo post, ma ormai penso che sia l'ora di abituarsi a questo tipo di "regolarità"... In fondo scrivo quando ne ho voglia, quando sento d'aver qualcosa da dire o da lasciare impresso per gli anni fututri. Ebbene al momento nulla di tutto ciò è vero: non ho particolare voglia di scrivere e, per ora c'è poco che voglio dire. Ah, aspetta, forse un paio di cose le ho in verità. Sono a Sofia in Bulgaria a fare una scuola di cucina, a realizzare il mio sogno; mi sono rimesso assieme a Prisca per realizzare l'altro mio sogno; ho comprato un pc nuovo di palla, per realizzare il terzo mio sogno. Ok, in poche parole la mia vita dopo la laurea ha preso una svolta inaspettata. Come sempre. Pianificare non è il mio forte e forse è proprio questo che rende ogni giorno interessante: non so mai con che stato d'animo andrò a letto. Progetti, progetti ovunque, ma quanti di questi vengono realizzati alla fin fine? Bè, nel mio caso se devo essere sincero quando sono veramente convinto in qualcosa non c'è modo di farla uscire dalla mia testa. La inseguirò fino in capo al mondo se sono convinto che quella sia la cosa giusta per me. Ho inseguito il mio amore a Berlino, presentandomi sotto casa sua, il giorno del suo compleanno e aspettando sotto la pioggia che lei mi riaprisse quella porta che è stata chiusa per troppo tempo (scena molto romantica, non trovate?). Volevo imparare a portare sul piatto la mia idea di cucina, volevo poter aprire un ristorante in futuro, e qui sono, a Sofia, in un Paese di cui non conosco nemmeno l'alfabeto. Nulla mi ferma se sto inseguendo i miei sogni. E questo è un dato di fatto. La vita ti mette sempre di fronte degli ostacoli e spetta a te decidere se sfondarli o aggirarli. Ma aggirare non ha mai fatto parte del mio essere... Devo sentire l'ebbrezza dell'aver raggiunto la vetta, di essere riuscito a dimostrare ancora una volta cosa si cela dietro quella mia maschera di fancazzista. Non sono in cerca di nessun riconoscimento da parte di parenti, amici, società o chi che sia. Sono alla ricerca di riconoscimento da parte di me stesso.So chi sono e sono pienamente cosciente delle mie possibilità. Ed è per questo che molto spesso sono autocritico all'ennesima potenza. Alcuni miei amici confondono questa autocritica con mancanza di autostima. Io stimo me stesso, ma sono convinto che ho molto in cui posso e devo migliorare. Non mi accontenterò fino a quando non mi renderò conto di esser diventato una persona che prenderei come modello, a cui potrei ispirarmi. Forse questo non accadrà mai, ma io andrò sempre alla ricerca di tale livello di perfezione, se così si può chiamare...
E non si può cercare la perfezione senza una colonna sonora, ed è per questo che anche oggi vi lascio con un contributo! 
P.S. Non vi preoccupate, penso proprio che nei prossimi giorni scriverò!