Picture posted on June 10, 2017.
I want to be as straightforward as possible in this little biography of mine so let me warn you: I won't sugarcoat anything nor I'll deliberately try to omit facts just to appear like a saint or flawless, contrary to what others have done to put all the blame of what happened on me, making me appear like a two-faced evil selfish monster with no heart and responsible for all the bad things in the world.
Let me tell you, with no intention to be offensive or judgemental towards anyone in particular, that what happened to me and keeps happening is possible only because we live in a sadly still highly sexist bigot narcissistical society, where everyone is so extremely self-absorbed/absolving to completely forget about the others' feelings and needs.
This story couldn't have happened so easily if I were a (straight and preferably white) man. You have to read my story from the perspective of a female born and raised in Sicily (Italy) ,a place where a very backward and narrow minded mentality still reigns supreme, a place that taught me how not to be and what I didn't like, a place that pushed me to be in constant fight against prejudices, misogyny and Mafia thus any form of fascist-like prevarication.
There's various reasons why a natural born rebel Aquarius like me, committed to freedom fights and creativity , has miserably failed in life, paradoxically remaining always stuck in a mental/emotional cage which has lead me to be the people pleasing person I have become in the last years, losing my very true essence and lately, my very freedom to be.
The traumatic events that start from my childhood to the particular situation I'm about to write about have already been widely narrated in my account jeannecateau on Instagram and gofundme page a few time ago, but of course not in the details, so I'll surely add some further information while proceeding in the narration of my story, if needed in the context.
For now, the thing you have to know about me ,and keep in mind while reading the upcoming chapters, is that I have always suffered from depression, anxiety, social anxiety, suicidal tendencies and obsessive compulsive disorder. That said, if you think that a person suffering from such disorders may be telling lies/ be victim of her own illness/obsessions, you are far from the truth.
Being mentally fragile ( quite different from being completely unstable like they often try to depict me) is not a self- deceptive mind state per sé. Speaking from experience, I've always found myself way more connected to reality, accurately self-analysing/ critical and owner of a iron-like memory, much more than a lot of people I could have around my whole life.
Being "different" to the point of being "differently sensitive / intelligent " makes you surely "differently able" to live your life, but it makes you also utterly prone to try to be "more normal than the normals".
Normality is a very ambiguous and hideous concept in my humble opinion. Who has decided to set the "parameters of normality " in this world? Who has decided that if you act /are in a certain way you are acceptable and if not you can basically die? Everyone you meet may easily tell you that they are soooo open minded and that everyone matters, but if you scratch the surface of hypocrisy of society-imposed "respectability"/ " decency", what truly emerges from the actual actions of almost every person claiming to be that way on the entire planet Earth is a bottomless pit of biases, egoism, envies, greed, base instinct, religion fanatism , narcissism, internalised sexism/ racism/ homophobia/ ableism that no one would ever admit to even themselves.
So what happens when you are a so called outsider/ different from the multitude of people? You likely get to become target of hate and senseless violence, because the primal instinct of human beings is often the dog-eat-dog/ jungle law scheme. If you dominate the "weakest link" you show the others, the "herd" ,to be the strongest thus to be the winner/be successful and have the doors of earthly paradise aka money+power+respect from others opened for you. Success conquered through violence, fear and all that brings. Never fair play, only pure egotistical "iron hand" used/abused to rule in our little insulse small four walled worlds.
And when you show you are not interested to rule anything but merely try to survive and feel a little happy in life, you become the laughing stock, the first chess pawn to eat.
When you know how this world truly works, but still want to stay true to yourself like me, you're never able to live a totally happy life.
I've always felt out of place and time all my life. The pressure of being a female in a men's men's world was already enough to have me distressed all day, sadly aware of having to endure a lot of male chauvinistic ideas about me and how my existence/ future/ways were supposed to be.
Then there was my innate solitary introvert aspect, worsened with time by the mental (sometimes physical) abuses I was unconsciously victim of since I was a child, then the bullying in school days, and the obvious mental disorders I've developed just because of highly stressing emotional traumas while I was growing up, when I was about 10.
All of this got me feeling like an alien in my own house and a foreigner in my own country (also because of my slightly darker skin tone that convinced a few persons I could meet that I was an immigrant, obviously pointed out as a supposed insult in their racist minds !).
The only thing that kept me hopeful and living has always been music, together with books, art, comics, cinema but most of all music. That's how I have learnt the most of what I know about the English language/ foreign culture, translating lyrics, reading fanzines and biographies about musicians, even more than what I'd learnt at school.
This is where I come from, this is what keeps me alive and this is who I am.
For a lot of people, my family members included in the past ( my beloved but "difficult" grandmother in first place) I should have been a son. Or a prostitute. But mostly a man. Because being a woman is the"sin"itself. You're the weakest link. You have to feel ashamed of how you are, your body, your thoughts. And if you are so unlucky to be born a female, well at least USE IT! Use your femininity, your sex to seduce and marry a rich man to live happily ever after. I was too "stupid" to use it, I detested the cliché, I detested all the crap about women always wanting money because , goddamn it, if you get raised to be looking for money and marriage to be truly satisfied with your life, instead of getting an independence and education (and getting paid fairly consequently!) why do you even complain that women become gold diggers after that??
"Less weekly allowance/gifts for you, less attentions, less care, less love if you act "hysterical=woman=horribly feminine", less everything if you don't shut up! Stop asking for more, stop talking about your needs , just annihilate yourself or I won't talk to you again, you'll get kicks and you'll be hated because you don't love us if you only think about yourself".
So I grew inside me the conviction that if I acted like a man, thus bossy, self- defensive - passive aggressive, apparently not showing emotions, not talking about my own feelings and needs, but sucking it all up for the sake of family's reputation and well being, I could feel safe and would have been left alone and could live my life like I wanted it.
"My father told me I should have been a son, because I'm a female with "balls", tough and smart, you too I see, ha ha!". This is how my grandmother used to brag about because she was a tom boy in her childhood. That fake conception that being a man was "better", because men are stronger , cooler, more intelligent, superior to women, that "best wishes, let's hope it's a boy" (auguri e figli maschi) kind of mentality was dreadful but so internalised she didn't even realize what a terrible message she was transmitting to me.
So I slowly became a tom boy , the other youngest son of the "royal family" of my ass, and of course, a punk, an anarchist, a rebel inside, a reactive but hidden feminist, always against the ones who want to impose themselves on the minorities or on those who they think are inferior with repression, because I didn't like that shit at all. It was weird, I was a walking contradiction apparently because I had a manly approach in my feminism but at that time it looked to me like the only way to survive and not get hurt over and over again.
Ironically enough, what you can criticize in me now is actually having men's ways... And those who are against me are obviously mostly men.
We'll talk about it in the next chapters anyway...