Breakdown

 This is a rant and I do not make a good impression in it. It could be worse.

I was 33 years old. My job, with transfer time, ate 12 hours of my day, and gave me nothing back, really.

Little pay, no career opportunities, no perks like moving around either.
I was on a desk, programming, from 8:30 to 17:30, plus travel time.

Now, get this straight - that job was the BRIGHT spot of my life.

When I was back at home, I was living with my mother (yeah, go living alone earning 18k a year... oh, you can't? what a surprise... by the way, it's not like I got back on my  feet, since then) and she was scared to death by, literally, anything.

Or, rather, she played every scare that passed through the media as terrorism tactics - more or less, it was like living with my own personal Bin laden.

The fucking SARS made two dead in Hong Kong? Hong Kong - what the fuck, 30 years ago HK didn't even exist, for people living in Italy, beyond being the place from where came the cheap calculators.

My mother was so scared of me catching it, in Milan, that I camped in the office for two weeks, trying to avoid to go back home. Until I was more or less booted from the place, having burnt all my allowable overtime for the year, in April.

After each scare, there was always another, so I couldn't even count on the Freudian relieve after the stress.

This, no matter how many time I said her that it was crap.

Because it was and still is CRAP:

I will be dead long before the fucking Antarctica melds, or the tuna will go extinct (OK, the tuna will disappear before me, maybe).

If a deadly pandemics spreads around the world, worrying about it the year before it appear will NOT FUCKING SAVE ME or anybody else, because I am not a health worker.

The only thing that made sense is that she was, really, scared of me going around and finally meeting a woman. So she spent her time belittling me and reminding me of how hopeless I was. I am not kidding.

Now, a sad truth is that I will never be much satisfied, in life, because...You likely know the stuff that I draw. Yes, that's kind of what I would like to do.

Which means that it goes years for me, between leaving a potential partner and meeting the next one.
And this is now, after 50 shades and the new DSM has taken down S&M from the "automatic philias" section.

Back in 2004, I felt that I had far less hopes, from that side. No hopes at all, really.
I had more or less accepted my lot in life, the only thing that I wanted was as little stress as possible.

Because I do not handle it well, and I had not much "ups" in my life to compensate for it.

The best I had in life back then was reading comics. Yeah, that's so exciting.

I had also stopped drawing, mostly because I didn't hope of ever getting any good with it.

Of course, she argued that I should give up buying comics, to spare one hundred bucks a month or so, to be ready to go alone when she died.

Could I say to her that, the moment she died I would look for female tenants, to share the house expenses, and sold the fucking Mercedes to buy a Punto?

Sold the fucking holiday flat?

Wait, I did.

It didn't matter, because it did not work with her narrative.

What mattered to her, was reminding me that I could not go alone (like not so few Italians of my generation).

If I had a passion, or need, in life that she did not recognize, she wanted me to cut it.

Because I may be the one drawing tiny girls with rotating, spiky dildos up their arses, but the member of my family that is a scary, dominating freak control is her.And her solution to every problem, ever since I exist, has always been cutting out something of my space, castrating me some fucking more.

Anyway, at that time I felt I was reaching the end of my ropes... and I told her so.

I asked her to keep her paranoid thoughts to herself, because my life was hard enough as it was.

(a thankless job was my BRIGHT spot, then I had an absolute null social life and a whore a month as sex life, no feel of hope whatsoever... brcause I had a null social life growing up and no idea of how one manages it and, also, because doing anything more meant moving more and sending her in a frenzied defence mode    ).

And her answer was

"I can't, It's my nature."


Now, I know that it is.

And I  would have accepted an "I'll try", if not an "I will".

Eve the stupid scorpion from the tale, answers "I will not sting you mid-water, I would drown myself"  to the frog. Then he stings the frog all the same, but at least it made a try.

It was asking too much from my mother, evidently.

"It is my nature".

Well, if we must follow our natures...

It is not in my nature to work 8 hours a day, losing some three more in transit, only to feel hopelessly imprisoned when I come back home - because I live with a control maniac - that I can't reasonably rid myself of anytime soon- that doesn't even want to try to keep herself in check.

If I feel a prisoner, if I am a prisoner inside my life... I will at least not contribute to the running expenses of the prison.  For me it was a bad moment... I could have recuperated from it, maybe, over time - or I may have killed myself, how my sister-in-law feared.

That year, though, things got together.

My brother decided to move away, to another country, and invited me to join the adventure.
My first impulse was saying no, though he showed me the place - where I live now - and it is gorgeous.

No way to earn a dime (most youngsters go away), but it is gorgeous.

Unfortunately, that year the university office where I worked had the first opening for a full time, permanent contract in half a decade. Of course, governmental stuff it was, so the selection of personnel was through public competition (more or less trimmed on what we temps already did - the Boss didn't really want to find himself with a bunch of unknown people to train).

I got third of the fifteen or so to be placed under contract, and all went well till the interview with the university's psychologist, a young woman with an incredibly nice ass but not the sharper tool in the box, who made me  the most dumb question you can make to someone paid 40% less of what he would earn in the private sector:

"What is your take on enterprise loyalty?"

In 2004? not even the Japanese believed any more in that crap, at least those of my generation.

I liked my colleagues, and the office, but as far as whole enterprises go, it is too abstract and uncaring an entity for ME to care about it. The enterprise is lucky that I work for it, instead of conspiring to destroy it as it should be. Over.

Of course, the shrink gave a negative opinion to me becoming an "eternal" employee (Italian government employees aren't ever canned, unless they kill somebody on the job, and even then, only "maybe") there and I mistook that as an effective block of the indefinite duration assumption, so instead of stay put I took the invitation from my brother and moved away.

I shouldn't have done so, because I lost those four (literally 4) friends that I had back in Italy, and I completely lose my marbles for quite some years (I didn't get them back, really).

I felt even more of a prisoner, and I really stopped contributing to the prison.


I am getting back in shape, little by little. Not enough, and not fast enough, probably.

I suspect that much of the reason why I feel better, this last year,  is really that my mother has become senile.She doesn't feel that she has the power in hand as she used to, and has become more  reasonable.

Almost human.

Maybe she will even die before I am old beyond any hope.
Maybe, I can still take out some happiness from this shit called life.

That said, if I could destroy the world tomorrow, I probably would.

Which makes a good thing that I was not born in the USA.

Or I would try to become Prez, and then, once the briefcase with the fucking codes was in my hands...

Weapons are made to be used.

First and foremost, nuclear weapons.

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA



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S'i fosse fuoco, arderei 'l mondo;
s'i fosse vento, lo tempestarei;
s'i fosse acqua, i' l'annegherei;
s'i fosse Dio, mandereil' en profondo;
s'i fosse papa, allor serei giocondo,
ché tutti cristiani imbrigarei;
s'i fosse 'mperator, ben lo farei;
a tutti tagliarei lo capo a tondo.
S'i fosse morte, andarei a mi' padre;
s'i fosse vita, non starei con lui;
similemente faria da mi' madre.
Si fosse Cecco com'i' sono e fui,
torrei le donne giovani e leggiadre:
le zoppe e vecchie lasserei altrui.

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Cecco Angiolieri