I put my things in a cupboard and started a new "life" that could have lasted for long - helping a friend to take care of her elderly grandad. I started living in another home to be on the job 24/7.
After a week...
I learned that being a caregiver is not like any other job: you give up your life entirely to live with the rhythm of another human being. It's your job to nullify your own needs for the other's needs. You become a robot whose main concern is to wait for orders. It's not something I ever experience before and, I must admit, for a few days I felt blessed: to have no independent thought in my mind was soothing and relaxing. I was reduced to nothing and I liked it.
Except at night, at a time that in my past life we would probably have called "early evening". I fell onto the bed, tired and hoping to sleep, but with my mind wide awake brooding about the outer world, and about everything I lost over a year ago. Everything I still miss so much that my breath stops and my vision blurs and my chest shrinks in pain until I cannot hold my tears any longer.
After two weeks...
I learned that I needed something very badly. The smell of my home, the touch of my forniture, seeing all that was Alberto's around me.
I discovered this much in the few hours I've been at home and I could not help but feel exhilarated! Seeing our pictures, our DVDs and books, and magazines, our TV set, our bed, his pillow... I was truly, uncontrollably giggling!
I became perfectly aware this is the first sign of an addiction, and I accepted it: I'm addicted to mementos of my old life. Without my "Linus blanket" I cannot function.
So, after almost three weeks...
I know what to do. I learned.
I have to go back home!
If I can't feel good (because I am unable to feel good anymore!) I can decide not to feel bad!
Besides, I have a couple of things that are waiting for me at home, beyond home itself - one possible job and a job that I have to force my mind to do.
The possible job has been like a bolt from the blue. When I saw it among dozens of possible positions, I could not believe it. They were recruiting in the very same printing factory Alberto and I used for some issues of the Inside Star Trek Magazine, for Ultimo Avamposto books, or STIC's roll-ups and banners... and many other things.
To be interviewed for a place I know nearly every product of has been fantastic, the mere chance to be able to work there is thrilling! I truly hope I'll land the job and start the 30-something minutes commute!
And there is the... journey-back-in-time-job. The only thing that will keep me from succeeding is... me! I am the only one who has to find the strenght to write for comics as I did 15 years ago. Thanks to Antonio, who is still believing in me, I will write my name as an author of Bonelli's "Agenzia Alfa". Except I will be alone this time. There will be no Alberto Lisiero & Gabriella Cordone... just me.
Bottom line...
I learned what I need. By being away. And now I know that I won't accept any job that brings me away from home, unless it's paid so much that I can go back every weekend to inhale my old life!
