A Morning Wake Up Call in Italy

 

An Early Morning Wake Up Call

“Even Jesus was not glorified in his own place but rather judged. “

-Unknown

 

It has always been a struggle to prove oneself from where you’re from, people tend to overlook what  known you can do because they’ve known you for so long to remember your mistakes but not the otherwise.  Yet, it should be the goal of oneself to rise above it all and to prove everybody wrong and oneself right.

A quest that most often than not makes one a free man, free from judging, free to become one’s true self, and free to become the best one can be. Was it Cambodia for me? I did eat, pray, and love in Bali but was it a life changing place for me? Sure, I have mind opening moments in Myanmar and found love in Thailand but where did my life really change? Europe? Australia?

I have been on the road since 2004 and since I left home, I always longed to go back home safe.  I did not know that leaving home will forever change my life.  I thought it was when father died when I was 16 that forced me to mature early, but it did not stop there.  Life made me struggle every step of the way because I have to make my own mistakes and wrong decisions to learn on my own.

Working on a modern day Amistad open my mind that life is cruel, and not fighting means you have to take it all in.  Escape to Italy was my young mind’s solution to all the suffering, but little that I know of that ahead of me was even worse.  Homelessness in the cold winter weather, hunger, and loneliness.  I didn’t know how horrible it was to be homeless in the snow.  Churches kept me warm when they’re open.

When I finally found a job, it was not as great as it was, it was camouflaging horror.  A sexual predator with a conscience, I was not raped but harrassed and in my hopeless situation as he sat me on top of the glass counter in the shop, locked himself in between my legs while his grip on my crossed wrists were so tight that all my strength pushing him away and trying to kick him does not even made him move a flinch.  He was that strong and I remember staring to his eyes while my mind asked him “Why?”, and I felt his grip loosened.  I pushed him away, grabbed my stuff and ran fast the switch of the automatic taparella not knowing how fast I got out there with the slow moving auto-taparella.

I remember how paranoid I’ve become after that.  Every bus and train I get on made me turn and get nervous  everytime  it opens.  Once, I remember docking when the bus stopped exactly where the monster’s shop was.  I thought I’ve gone crazy.

I ran so fast that, it took me an hour to tell my landlord what happened to me.  Surprised hearing my story, he went down to tell my uncle, my only close relative, that lives downstairs my story and came back telling me that my uncle wanted to talk to me.  I went down but he did not say anything helpful, I remember he only asked, “Was that true?”. I nodded.  Nothing else after that, so I left and went back up.

Friends helped me to file a complaint to the Carabinieri, and I am grateful up until now to those who have helped me, went out their way to help someone that they were not even related. I don’t forget good deeds unto me.  It was a terrible state of mind and being; An mind opening experience that slaps truth in your face that when I called home and told my mother what happened to me, she was worried at first but were asking money for my siblings’ the next day.  That day, I realized I was all alone in this battle I fought to help them.  The truth that forever changed me.  I could have died that day and because I wasn’t they think asking money the next day was okay.  I could not comprehend any of that at all but it was my wake up call.  Italy changed me, my relationships, and how I deal with disrespectful people.

I’ve learned to let go but I am still healing, and traveling definitely helped a lot to it.  Different places has taught me different things I sometimes overlook in my daily life.

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Independence

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