Rooted from Betrayal

I would have had a normal life, with mundane problems and simple joys. I would have started practicing as a general doctor by the age of 24 with intentions of specializing and later becoming a neurosurgeon. I would have lived a normal life far from crime and danger, a life centered around saving lives in a hospital, with taxes and rising fuel prices being my most pressing concern.

However, life, fake friends and a mafia brother whose attention I had somehow caught, had other plans. Instead of a normal and safe life, I lived a life of pain, fear, crime, danger, blood, loss and guns thousands of kilometers from my home, over the seas...in Italy.

Though it is said that one must not define themselves by the things they have been through, the things they have done nor by what was done to them, I sometimes fail so spot the difference. I am aware that I am not defined by the things I have done, that the things I have been through only helped me better understand and reshape myself to be someone stronger who could face the challenges I had to go through and that the things that have been done to me only taught me valuable lessons I can never forget.

Despite all that however, I know for certain that had I not been betrayed by those I had believed to be family, I would not have lived the life that I had and I would not be where I am today.

It would not be too far a stretch to say that my life is...