Reach For Me

Prologue

When you're living in rome, nothing prepares you for the void that fills you.
No matter how much money you have, how many parties you go to or how many houses you own, nothing interferes with the loneliness you feel when the doors close.

When i heard this being told to me i never thought it would be me.
Everything was just too perfect for me.
Until it wasn't.

When i was a child i saw everything with pink colored glasses.
I had the life any kid would dream of.
I had every toy you would imagine, the perfect parents and an even more perfect companion by the name of Vittorio.

But the more you grow, the more those pink glasses fade.
I soon realized that my life wasnt indeed perfect.
It was if you looked at it from the outside, but from the inside it wasnt the picture perfect life everyone desired.

Sure i had money and a house and parents.
But life gets pretty heavy when those parents work so much to the point where you dont ever see them, or when they dont even have time for each other so it makes you question if they really even love each other.
After the age of 10 when i started to show troublesome behavior for these exact reasons, my problems would be pushed aside with expensive toys and wishes granted, but that wasnt what my heart desired.

The bright side was though that my best friend Vittorio was always there for me, and i was always there for him.
Whenever i had finished crying and throwing a fit in my bedroom, Vittorio was always there to steal candy with me, or when we got older, to come to a (not allowed) party with me.

Life was good with him around.
Until he wasnt around anymore.
My Sophomore year started off rocky when i found out that Vittorios parents had allowed him  to have a year abroad in Canada, and my absent parents didn't.
I had to come to terms with it.
I guess i do have other friends so i dont have room to complain.

Sophomore year was tough without him around.
He wasnt there to sneak notes to me in class, or to pull my hair from behind my chair anymore.
Nevertheless we stayed in contact, but he didnt give away too much.
I brushed it away with the reasoning of him being busy at his new school.

Things turned around when i met my new classmate Damiano.
He was the troubled son of the ambassador (who happens to be my dads coworker, which is a pro because that made the conferences that my dad dragged me to more interesting).
The kids in our school didn't like him but i found myself laughing with him under the schools stairway smoking a joint, which actually made us drift closer.

That same year i managed to also get closer to Chiara and Ludo.
Although they were a problematic pair in our school they werent bad company.
But that lead me to some horrible paths.

Long story short i went from going to a club with my friends, to going on dates with some questionable men, to the dates turning into something more...

I guess my loneliness took the better of me and i thought it would fix it, but i still found myself staring at the ceiling of my bedroom late at night.

After a long sophomore year, it was time for junior year.
New year, same shit.