Meet Riccardo — Perinatal Stroke

Translated from Italian


First of all thanks to my family. Thank you for what you have done so far, from accepting for what I am physically up to the tenacity you have used to make me grow. Long years of intensive physiotherapy that have not cost me fatigue at an early age, but have become a very heavy boulder during adolescence. Every time I saw myself comparing with my limit.

It is difficult to write this letter for me: a little because I do it very few times, a little because I’m afraid to testify and highlight my feelings and my current emotions. I had a very difficult life compared to my peers, as a child I was in contact with the real reality and not that naive, sweetened, mixed with unattainable dreams. Many times I ask myself: “Why can not I be like the others? How can I fill this gap determined by disability with others?”. I still can not find, after many years, an answer and an explanation to these two questions; but I know that at least you are there and for this I have at least six shoulders on which to lean. I feel, many times, the need to have real friends, but unfortunately the words “love” of some people made me suffer because in this way I have to think about two things: looking for friends and seem like an empathic person when I’m out with others, so emotionally expose yourself. I do not know how to behave in these cases, I prefer to remain motionless on the couch feeling like a traffic policeman always standing on his catastrophe,  as poetess Alda Merini says, instead of trying to go out and maybe have as much fun as when they are my only friends. I am afraid, afraid of not being ready to experiment and sometimes go on and not be up to the expectations of others. Expectations, many times, produce disappointments; disappointments that I can not afford to fill that “famous” gap that I constantly meditate on. Failing is almost unforgivable at times; the mind and the heart must think and act also for the external part of the body left in deficit. Everything must be kept under control, everything can not be accomplished, and after the disappointments that I most likely had, my rational part got the better of the emotional part. Observe, meditate, ruminate, disassemble actions and then most of the time resign myself to the thought of “not being able” to perform and do things. This I think: “Why should I be able and not someone else?”, “Why should they choose me?” It’s true: I need help, for example the physiotherapist helps me to improve myself and be a better guy. I always liked the desire to improve also to help others always and not only when they are in difficulty. I am always undecided and I stop even in front of small logistic details, how much I would stop the thoughts and live lightly.

In all this, my schooling was undoubtedly marked by my emotions, sometimes I did not receive the aid, sometimes I emphasized the criticism. Now in high school, my tutor, the philosophy professor, I consider him as a refuge, as my second “home”. Use philosophy to direct my thinking to the achievement of my ideals. It’s protection for me.

I end this letter with the intention of continuing this long story together, struggling, but with hope and smiles.

I hug you!

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