A letter from the therapeutic community

by Graziano Cappelletti

Roma 21-9-1999

There was a sentence in a book I read which said: "There is a way to live happily and be free: believing in the impossible dreams and in the miracles you can also make".

I never did. Never believed in what I could have done for myself, or for those that cared for me. Until one day I met "her", the drug, which made me feel what I wanted to be: accomplished, deeply stirred, mentally satisfied, content, carefree, free…so I took that road against everything and everybody, the road of solitude I felt to be the only antidote to my suffering.

I have spent a lifetime between powders and jails with a marked face and out of my head; drugs were my only companion. I used to think that every that was happening to me was the world's fault, people ddi not understand. Now I know that everything that has happened to me was nobody's fault, only the result of the negative answers I gave to situations.

Now, thanks to the help of the people I have met on this therapeutic programme, I have understood why and when I started to take drugs, meaning being alone among who loved me.

I started with drugs (not in real terms) when I was six and I lost my father. It was a day I would always remember as magical. I was very close to my father and I was just starting to savour the sentiment that links a father to his son. I used to follow him, imitating him inside of me; but I was small and our practical interests were different. He had his commitments and I was a child.

One day this detachment collapsed. I was starting to feel part of his life. Happy. Everything happened very quickly, time a year and my father was taking me places with him: hunting, to his work. He took me loads of places, so I found out what this could mean for me. Then, early one beautiful (I believe) Sunday morning he woke me up and asked if I wanted to come and watch him play football. This meant a lot to me and I was proud. I felt important and nearly big. I nearly said to myself: "I'm here too!"

When we arrived I felt at the centre of everything thanks to his strength and presence (even if I wanted to I could never describe what is felt upon discovering certain feelings and emotions). I was a bit distracted by the emotion of following the match; so much euphoria. An environment a child thrives on. All of a sudden that fateful exclamation: OOOH! I did not understand, my blood froze and for a moment I did not realise what was happening. Then my eyes started scanning the playing field for my dad. But I could not find him, until I saw him laying in the centre of the field. Chaos inside, lots of questions and no answers, only a sure feeling: I was no longer happy.

Around me many people trying to grab my attention, but I only had a single thought: dad. Then people started to say what had happened, some cried, some shouted "a man from Rome is dead", and I was from Rome, so I started putting things together. So afraid of being left alone, abandoned. I still did not understand well the meaning of the word death, but I already realised that my much loved and rediscovered dad was leaving me and maybe not coming back anymore. I stood a few metres away waiting for a sign, something that would have given importance back to my life. A long time went by, then they took him away.

I went home looking for something. Someone to tell me a lie, but I found a "PHOTO" I still have printed on my thoughts: lots of people, among them my mum and little sister broken by pain; there I was only a spectator, I did nothing, impotent, without spilling a tear. I was angry, suffering, sad, alone, but especially I called on Jesus to stop it all. And that's how I fell asleep. The next morning I knew the meaning of the word death.

From then onwards, I closed the pain inside and started to need something to cling to and to fight day after day in order to hide from this pain, from this death that felt like abandonment. So I began a major, useless effort trying to cover everything up, and hiding from myself and others.

I have spent these last 22 years looking who knows for what; doing and acting only in function of others. I grew up with the fear of losing people and because of this I was always trying to be who I was not, not accepting myself and being afraid of not being accepted and finding myself alone. Because of this I have always sought to be somebody different; but the fatigue was too heavy, the solitude inside me kept growing, and drugs were, unconsciously at the time, the only remedy to all this pain and to my hidden feelings thirsty for affection.

Today, thanks to this experience in therapeutic community I have started to accept myself for who I am, and to admit that there really is no hiding place where we can hide from ourselves. Here, looking back over my past, I have had the chance to get to know myself and to see myself through the eyes of others. Today I know the importance of dialogue, of sharing, of debate, and I understand that until did not share my secrets, I could not escape them.

I have always being afraid of being myself, but now I know that to be known is the same thing as knowing myself, accepting myself, loving myself for who I am, neither like the giant of my dreams nor as the dwarf of my fears. Or better, I do not present myself as who I am not…but as a man, part of a whole with a contribution to make and my experience to offer.

Dedicated to Luca, may his death not have been in vain - 12 March 1996