Restlessness

It was "the beginning" that was the drug. That feeling of newness and magic of being able to be or go anywhere you want. An evolution that I still didn't understand the exit signal, the escape.

These letters are born for those who still believe. For those who despite everything are sure it's possible. For all those who keep searching, door after door.

For those who know life can be hard, difficult, but despite everything are still here. Under a wonderful sky made of possibilities waiting to be seized.

But it wasn't true. I hadn't chosen any of it. I had only inherited it, piece by piece, without ever stopping to ask: do I still need this? Does it make me better? Does it take me where I want to go?

And this is biology. The body is programmed to save energy and push away pain. In winter blood moves away from hands and feet and flows toward the heart. If you lose your hands you still live, if you lose your heart you don't. It's the same mechanism that keeps you on the couch when you should get your ass up.

My brain was screaming: stay. It's easier. You have a secure salary. You'll build your thing calmly, in your free time.

And every time I got there, happiness lasted three days. Then the emptiness returned. Then the hunger returned. Then that feeling in your chest returned, telling you "it's not enough, it's still not enough."

Doctors won't make you happier. Nutritionists won't make you thinner. Teachers won't make you smarter. Gurus won't make you calmer. Mentors won't make you richer. Personal trainers won't make you fitter.

I call it, for as long as I can remember, restlessness.

August 3, 2021 — "Why is there this sense of restlessness inside me? Why do I keep looking for something I don't even know?"

This is monkey mind's real game. Keeping you agitated on the surface, so you never go down to see who's underneath.

They had decided what they were. I was still choosing.

Because in all these years I've also seen people like those in the village — physically still, intellectually still, existentially still — and inside them there was another restlessness, identical to mine, except they didn't have a means to express it, or maybe they had just found a vice to suppress it.

The only thing I really understood, in those ten minutes, is that my brain doesn't know how to stay still.

So it's natural that they're still, it's a choice they never had to make, they don't even know they can make it.

Because in all these years I've also seen people like those in the village — physically still, intellectually still, existentially still — and inside them was another restlessness, identical to mine, except they didn't have a way to express it, or maybe they had just found a vice to suppress it.

The only thing I really understood, in those ten minutes, is that my brain doesn't know how to stay still.

So it's natural that they're still, it's a choice they've never had to make, they don't even know they can make it.

But — and here I finally get to the only thing that keeps me attached to this letter — it can still be done.

It can still be done, starting from where you are now, reading this thing, with coffee that's gone cold and a day that's already half over.

A whole month. Not four days, not a week, not "passing through and then we'll see." A month still in the same place, with the same door I open in the morning, the same corner café, the same sound coming through the window at seven.

For the first half hour he's alone, him and the cold. Then the others arrive, but meanwhile he's already started: the blows on the iron rise up to my window while the city, behind him, wakes up calmly.

I don't know if he goes home in the evening and hugs his children. I don't know if he laughs at dinner, if he sleeps all night without noise in his head. Maybe he's ten thousand times happier than me — than me who's been moving for years and can't find a minute to stop, who looks at him from above and calls him blind while I'm the one who, from this window, can't see shit except the next goal to conquer.

I did it everywhere. I had the decision already in my pocket — clear, right, mine — and I stood still waiting for someone else to make it first.

And then, at the bottom, a line thrown there like a promise. I still find it, with the same date:

It was one of those promises you write at night, with the conviction of finally having understood yourself, and the next day you're back there, on the edge of the same sidewalk, waiting for the guy with the earbuds. It was written by someone who still didn't know how to cross alone. Someone who gave himself courage on paper because he couldn't find the courage in the street.

That night, the concept that got under my skin was the answer to a question I'd left you with a few weeks ago — one I'd been keeping in my pocket. I'll ask it again, so you don't have to remember it: is it right to settle, or do you always have to raise the bar?

Same street, different town. The GPS was calmly taking us the other direction, totally sure of itself, and we were right there trusting it.

At home, kept safe — which is why I can't show you the original — I still have a piece of paper, written in 2021. A list of things I wanted by the time I turned thirty. At the top: at thirty, live in Dubai.

I still have the 2021 note. There's one line at the bottom I haven't checked off. One day I'll tell you what it is. Not today.

And it's all connected, do you see? The body on alert, the need to light up the room, the inability to stay still on my own — they're the same thing. My nervous system learned that danger is fought by making everyone love you. That you survive by conquering. And as long as that's true, every time I write who I want to become alone, then a week in Barcelona comes along and my body sends me back into the crowd to look for proof that I matter. And what I'd written falls apart. Every time.

Because my default mode is the second one. I'm always on. Always scanning: who's in the room, how am I coming across, do they like me, am I holding the evening together, am I performing. Even when I'm "having fun," the system is on alert — except I call the alert energy, I call it being on top of things, I call it my gift. And the safe shore, for my body — do you know which one it is? It's not the new one, the healthy one, the shore of the still Stefano. It's the old one. The Stefano who drinks and lights up the room — my body has known him for thirty years: there, however bad things get, it knows exactly how to survive. The other shore — the sober one, quiet, who doesn't need to win anyone over — is unknown territory, and a body on alert treats unknown territory as a threat. So it keeps me on this side. Even when I'm miserable on this side, it keeps me here, because it's the only place it knows.

There it is. The bridge from the book, in the flesh. My body, in Barcelona, did what it's always known how to do: it brought me back to the shore it knows, and pinned me there. Not because I don't know where I want to go — I know perfectly well, I wrote it down in black and white. But because it, on the other side, still doesn't believe it.

And if you don't like the answer: the pen is still there. The fact that someone else has been holding it for thirty years doesn't mean you can't take it back tonight.

I've spent my life wanting to improve myself. Grow, evolve, change, have more, become. The last few letters I've written you are about nothing else: changing who carries the suitcase, rewiring the brain, deciding to become someone else. I still believe in all of it, by the way. I'm not taking anything back.

Three times "I'm jealous." Me. The one who's now explaining to you that you're already someone, that you shouldn't compare yourself. Three times, in black and white, envy for those who have a path. I haven't recovered from anything. I'm writing this to you while I'm still doing it.