Just a few things about me
What you should know about me
Today, I am a very different person from what I once was.
If I gave you 50 claps, it means I read your story in its entirety and liked it.
I currently live in a very beautiful, warm and calm country.
I can say that in terms of security, it is one of the safest and most peaceful countries in Europe. Furthermore, I have my own house, close to the sea. I have a beautiful family. I have a good job, well paid, I wear a suit and tie. In short, a stable life. So everything is going very well, and I have no reason to complain, right?
Wrong! I feel like this life isn’t completely my true life.
I miss my previous life. I’m not talking about past lives or reincarnation. I’m talking about another “Me” from the past. I feel like an impostor in my own life.
As my parents were poor, they had to emigrate. My sisters and I were born and raised in another country. Until I was 22 years old, my reality was different. Completely different.
I grew up and lived in a complicated neighbourhood in a big city. I learned to solve my problems on my own. Violence, drugs, and alcohol were part of everyday life. It was hard, but I was used to it and I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.
Life in the neighbourhood was simple. I don’t bother others and they don’t bother me. As simple as that. It was a very nightlife. During the day, those who were not at school slept. But at night, we all walked the streets, often doing bad things. Within the neighbourhood, no one bothered us, we were part of it. The problem was when groups came from other neighbourhoods. I saw and participated in many scenes of fights between neighbourhoods. After they came to ours, we always ended up going to theirs to stake out our position.
At school, it was the same thing. From time to time, students from other schools came to ours to create problems and vice versa. I personally never went to other schools, but when they came to mine I also had to participate in the fights. We had to defend the school.
It was at school, when I was around 12 years old, that I saw my first firearm.
A friend in my class had a small gun that he had always in his pocket. He wasn’t even a bad guy, but he was a little older than me, about 16 years old, and he carried a gun. After that, I saw many other friends with guns.
Another thing that also happened a lot was that young people on the weekend, to go out at night, stole cars that they abandoned in the morning. This happened every weekend.
One day I was with two friends sitting on the steps of the building when a third friend appeared, it was “Crazy Eric”, that’s what everyone called him (I’ll eventually write a little about him, he was quite a character). Then Crazy Eric approaches us and says, “Have you seen my new car?”. He never had a car, and I knew he didn’t even have a licence. Okay, so we went to see the car. It was a Ford XR3i, red, like this one:
In the late 80s, it was considered a bullet.
It was a car that all young people wanted to have. It had electric windows (which was still rare), a pioneer radio and powerful speakers like we liked, in short, a dream car. I got in the car, sat behind the wheel and Crazy Eric said to me “Do you want to drive it?”. What a damn question, of course I want to! So I asked him for the keys. He looks at me and says, “I lost the keys, but all you have to do is touch these two wires that are hanging, and the car will start straight away”. Okay, I got it, I wiped off everything I had touched with my hands with the sleeve of my coat and got out of the car. There are so many stories that I experienced in that neighbourhood until my 22 years old, that I feel like I don’t belong where I am now.
It's just I can’t understand why I miss it so much if where I am, life is so much better and comfortable. If I had stayed there, I know I would never have achieved everything I have. Not even my family. Maybe even I would have ended up badly. This doesn’t make any sense!
